Tobias Forge Refutes “Rock is Dead” Comments: “There Will Be More Bands”
I don’t know about you, but if I never hear someone claim that “rock is dead” I immediately know to ignore whatever comes out of that person’s face hole next. They’re obviously not paying attention. One other person that’s trying to push back against that sentiment is none other than Ghost mastermind, Tobias Forge.
In a recent interview with Consequence, Forge pushed back on the notion that the rock genre isn’t sustainable, since the modern crop of acts can’t stand up to the legacy acts. Having personally built Ghost from the ground up, Forget said
“I think it was Gene Simmons that said it most times, but I mean a lot of people have said that rock ‘n’ roll is dead and there will be no new headliners. I understand that it’s been sparse, but I think that with the unfortunate disappearance of a lot of bands that I like — Kiss being one of them — I do believe that with time I think that there will be more [headlining rock] bands.”
If you’ve been following Ghost at all, you immediately know that rock isn’t dead. We can debate all day whether they’re metal or not, but it should be reasonable to call them at least an arena rock band. And given the fact they sell out massive venues after only playing small locations just a few years ago is impressive.
But that’s not just on Ghost. Having played the big festivals for a while now, Ghost and by extension Tobias Forge have been on the frontline checking out new talent.
“There are a few examples of fairly new bands who’ve risen to great statures, faster than we did,” he explained. “I think that there’s this strange time phenomenon that happened somewhere in the 2000s where everything that was sort of old was old, and everything that came after was new, and just keeps on being labeled as new — especially by people who at the time were in their twenties or thirties or forties and now are in their forties, fifties, sixties. Which I think is an age thing.”
Ultimately, Forge says a band’s staying power is sometimes all about perception.
“If you ask a lot of our fans who are 15 years old now, just the fact that our band has been around for 15 years — do you think that they think that we are a new band? No. And that’s how it should be. I think they are right in the sense that we’re an old established band. If our first album came out in 1980, and it’s now 1995, that’s an old band.”
As it stands, Ghost is currently out on the road for their world tour in support of Skeleta. You can find the full list of dates below.
