Rolling Stone have published a new piece titled ‘Why Mainstream Rock Sucked In 2018’ which also touches upon the hard rock and metal scene. The piece goes on to outline the reasons behind the genre’s continued fall from popularity—an unfortunate reality displayed by hip hop music having become the dominant genre among U.S. audiences.
In addition to labeling the work of retro rock hopefuls Greta Van Fleet as ‘expert forgeries’ and Imagine Dragons as ‘overproduced schlock’, the following entry was included:
“The place where the most traditional definition of rock flourishes is on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart, though its Top 10 sounds even more homogenized than the general rock charts. And the things they sing about are just plain boring most of the time.
Nu-metal stalwarts Godsmack are forever pissed off and hating the world on their Number One, “Bulletproof.” Badflower ruminate on suicide and want to haunt everyone on “Ghost.” And the professional ‘roid ragers in Five Finger Death Punch want to death-punch everyone who’s ever shit-talked them.
The music on all of these is rock dialed to 11 (save Badflower, which is a little limp). It’s no wonder the active-rock station I grew up with in Colorado still plays White Zombie and Pink Floyd as much as, say, Papa Roach.
Incidentally, bands like Nirvana and Linkin Park are the artists most responsible for the state of hard-rock radio these days. Lyrically, so many singers have embraced what was once vulnerable confessions by someone like Kurt Cobain and turned them into sad-sack declarations, and musically, they’re all going for the slick, rap-inspired hyper-produced tones that Mike Shinoda & Co. perfected 15 years ago. The copy-of-a-copycat effect has been running rampant in genre ever since. But commercial rock’s banality runs even deeper.”
You can take in the whole piece over at rollingstone.com.