One of the fastest ways you can wind me up - or at least get an eyeroll out of me - is to tell me that rock is dead. I don't recommend you try this because, firstly, you will look like a chump. Secondly, I might just screech at a pitch so shrill that it will go into ultrasonic and only dogs will be able to hear me.
'Rock is dead' is one of the most boring epithets a music purist can spout. Not only is it a needlessly pessimistic cliche that's been through so many spin cycles it's falling apart - every so often, a broadsheet columnist will inevitably attempt to read its last rites - it is also factually incorrect. What you tell me when you believe that rock is dead is that you're out of touch. It also means you're really, really missing out. (And Gene Gallagher, I hate to tell you this, but you sound a bit silly claiming to 'bring back' rock music when it was never dead to start with).
Look around. We live in a time where, according to Live Nation, the number of hard rock concerts have jumped by 14 per cent. On top of that, 13 per cent of arena gigs are metal gigs. The ticketing giant attributed this to a younger crop of bands pushing through to mainstream-baiting status, with Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Ghost, Turnstile and Pierce The Veil leading the charge. Bring Me The Horizon are still selling tickets in their hundreds of thousands. The old guard are still at it, with Metallica circling the globe on their M72 world tour, Korn uniting different generations of fans (and headlining Download), and System Of A Down returning live in an era where their angular, idiosyncratic, politically-charged music feels apt for the moment.
There’s still a gigantic tide pool of nostalgia out there as the emo teenagers of the 2000s hit their thirties, but the pleasing thing is that there’s more than ever rising to the top that is current. On top of that, as genres like pop punk, nu metal and modern variations of grunge (particularly ‘grungegaze’ or ‘nu-gaze’), have cycled back around in popularity, women, queer people and people of colour have had their turns to make previously white, blokey (and misogynistic) genres their own.
Step away from arenas and into academies and the picture looks just as bright, if not brighter. Names like Nova Twins, Sprints, Amyl and the Sniffers and Lambrini Girls are pushing up through the undergrowth into some impressively sized rooms for the length of their careers. Punk is in full flush and so is hardcore - Scowl, Knocked Loose, High Vis, Mannequin Pussy and more will surely be looked back on as the bands of our time. British metal post-pandemic is in the most muscular shape it has been in years, where bands like Loathe and Heriot could be crossover heroes in the making.
As Hanna Chalmers so eloquently pointed out in this guest essay back in July, the conditions have been perfect for the spirit of punk to seep back into popularity. The era of AI slop, enshittification and the soullessness domination of algorithms and brain-rot content has created the ideal conditions for something loud, coarse and driven by the hottest and fiercest of human emotions to break through and offer an antidote that galvanises the formation of community and acts of resistance. Perhaps, to some extent, other forms of rock music offer this too. Interestingly, in further opposition to the sterility of modern culture that Chalmers elaborates on, the style of rock music’s production seems to be slowly shifting from overly glossy to something rougher, as if fighting against yet more technology interference in its sound.
Rock music, of course, had to endure to get here. It had to survive being pushed down in the pecking order in the 2010s, back down into corners and back underground. My point of entry into rock music was at the midpoint of this decade, and I remember yearning to see myself and the scene I lived vicariously through in magazines represented on a bigger scale than just sets from Reading Festival on BBC iPlayer. Nonetheless, it was there. I saw enough people around and about in emo band shirts to know it was.
It was clearly enough of a cash cow that major labels sniffed around to poach bands before spitting them out again after they diluted their sound to watery, pop mush and fans deserted them as a result. There was hope, which I have been reminded of in seeing so many albums from my adolescence turn 10 recently, like Bring Me The Horizon’s ceiling-smashing That’s The Spirit, or Neck Deep’s landmark Life’s Not Out To Get You, which put a British twist on a very Americanised style of pop punk.
The foundations for now must have been laid at this time too. 2015 was the year of Enter Shikari’s The Mindsweep, Ghost’s Meliora, Turnstile’s debut album Nonstop Feeling, modern arena-conquerors Halestorm’s Into The Wild Life. This period kick-started an open-mindedness within rock music to go beyond simple categorisation, to embrace multitudes, to fuse genres (although some may have used this as a convenient cover to explain why they were essentially make pop albums that their fanbases never really latched onto). Maybe this purple patch we’re witnessing now was always coming, and maybe the pandemic with its nostalgia-as-comfort-blanket tendencies catalysed it. That, and the search for sounds that were as organic and genuine as can come from ‘real instruments’, as it were.
The quintessential set up of a guitar or two, bass and drums has been a staple of music for decades now. Because of how long it’s lasted thus far, I’m inclined to think it can last forever. There will always be teenagers in their bedrooms with fireworks in their heads as they stumble across ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Master Of Puppets’ or ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ or reams and reams of other iconic songs for the first time, who are converted for life. They might be inspired to bash their own instruments and start a band and carry on the lineage of great rock and metal music.
It will shapeshift in sound over time and likely go through different periods of ebbing and flowing, but it will continue. It speaks to those who exist in the margins, or who feel different, or want to break free from their stifling lives as they stand. File rock music under the same bracket as death and taxes – it’s a fact, and a constant of life, albeit a far more joyous one.
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Hanna Chalmers