During a recent interview with Consequence, Ghost’s Tobias Forge weighed in on the “rock is dead” debate. The frontman disagreed with the assertion, citing successful artists like Sleep Token, Måneskin, and Greta Van Fleet.
Forge said the following:
“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.
There are a few examples of fairly new bands who’ve risen to great statures, faster than we did. 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.
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.”
He also added:
“Sleep Token or Måneskin or Greta Van Fleet are all new bands. I think they prove that you can absolutely go places. You can form a band tomorrow and theoretically become a big band within a few years. I think you do so by trying to want to create something.”
Metal Anarchy 
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