rabidelfman t1_jd6hi6c wrote on March 22, 2023 at 4:26 AM

Reply to comment by night_dude in Lollapalooza 2023 line-up: Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, and more confirmed by ninjazop

There's actually a damn good Japanese rock band playing Lolla this year - BAND-MAID. Check em out. For other rock bands, the big ones that come to mind are Volbeat, Ghost, Maneskin... Which is about all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm more into hard rock, metal, and synth pop these days... Tons of great bands abound in those genres.

night_dude t1_jd6nd08 wrote on March 22, 2023 at 5:33 AM

We truly live in the golden age of synth pop and disco revival. I'm a ginormous Lorde and Carly Rae Jepsen fan. Doja and SZA are awesome too, even though they're further toward hip-hop than synth pop.

Maneskin are a great example of the problem, IMO - I mostly like this review because it's OTT but it points to a broader point about modern rock, that basically since Jet came on the scene in the 2000s, most mainstream rock bands have been tributes to older, better music.

The alternative rock genres (like post-hardcore and emo in the 90s-2000s) and indie rock scenes (King Gizzard, Lucy Dacus, Courtney Barnett etc) have been making fantastic music in that time, but everything from the Darkness (who I love, don't get me wrong) to Greta Van Fleet is basically one giant Zeppelin, Queen and AC/DC tribute act, with a couple of bad Pearl Jam cover bands (looking at you, Nickelback) thrown in there for good measure

rabidelfman t1_jd7xzan wrote on March 22, 2023 at 2:13 PM

I absolutely love CHVRCHES and VNV Nation. I have Screen Violence on vinyl and I love every second of it. It sits right next to my Arch Enemy and Spiritbox vinyls, heh.

To be honest, I've only ever heard one or two tracks from Maneskin, and I thought they were alright. As long as it was rock, I was happy hearing it mainstream. But, I agree that a lot of the more popular rock bands these days are simply just mimicking 60s and 70s rock trends, it's one of the reasons I've been looking outside of the Western world for rock. Apparently, Japan has a massive rock band population, and it's pretty amazing. Like I said in my response above, BAND-MAID is playing Lolla - if you haven't heard them, check them out. They're excellent rock and hard rock, and sound phenomenal live. Definitely check out the JP rock scene, there are a ton of gems in there.

I, honestly, haven't heard of any good straight up rock bands come out of the West outside of Volbeat and Ghost (and I love both, though Ghost is its own genre, imo). It's to the point where I don't really actively search out new rock bands and stick with metal, synth pop, and industrial (Covenant is touring the US!).