Review Summary: Rock music may not be dead, but it's time to pull the plug.
God only knows how many rock bands in history have started out either covering songs by Led Zeppelin or writing material inspired by said kings of hard rock. This is such a frequent occurrence at this point that it seems almost a natural step in their artistic development. And who can really criticize them for it? Zeppelin epitomized the balance of chemistry, musicianship and songwriting ability that 99% of rock bands would kill for. The only issue with Zeppelin idolatry is that for every band who uses that inspiration as a tool to branch their sound out even further, you have another band who never develops past this stage in artistic puberty, meandering through the rest of their artistic careers like every pseudo-angsty 14 year-old you knew and avoided in high school.
Enter Greta Van Fleet, a four-piece outfit from Michigan consisting of the three Kizka brothers (Josh, Jake and Sam) and drummer Danny Wagner. Originally an above-average Zeppelin cover band who performed at various high school events, their song "Highway Tune" burst the band into the center of the rock music scene in early 2017, drawing praise from classic rock fans young and old. Of course, it must be explained that many self-described "classic rockers" live in a perennial state of musical nostalgia, feeling marginalized by current musical trends and subscribing to an "I was born in the wrong generation" mindset. You know it when you hear it: "no good music was made after 1987", "music nowadays only talks about drugs and sex", "get off my lawn, you damn kids". This context is important because it is the only possible explanation for why a band as awful as Greta Van Fleet is capable of getting this much popularity.
Let's make this painfully clear: despite the band's arguments to the contrary, Led Zeppelin's impact on Greta Van Fleet does not stop at mere influence. Each and every aspect of Greta's sound is modeled after Zeppelin in damn near every way, and any differences in approach are not conscious, they are merely due to Greta's vastly inferior technical abilities. Lead vocalist Josh Kiszka is arguably the worst offender, not aping Robert Plant's stylings so much as committing identity theft against them. The opening track "Edge of Darkness" is a perfect example of Kiszka's copycat approach going all the way down to the slurred diction, only diverging from the Plant approach when he attempts to go for a cleaner sound and sounds like a drunk, congested Axl Rose as a result. More embarrassing still is his strained, soul-less rendition of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come", complete with "Like a Rolling Stone"-esque organ sound to amp up the nostalgia levels to 11.
While the other instrumentalists are not usually as blatant in their indebtitude to Zeppelin, they also don't necessarily distance themselves from it. Guitarist Jake Kiszka in particular borrows many a Jimmy Page guitar tone and writes many a Page-like riff on this album. And while Kiszka is also the strongest instrumentalist on the record, what he lacks is originality. Every guitar solo and riff on the record feels either like a simplification of a better Page solo or riff ("Highway Tune") or just uninspired ("Talk on the Street"). As far as the rhythm section goes, the playing is satisfactory enough, but just judging by the production would have you believe that they're irrelevant to the music. One of Zeppelin's strengths was bringing their bass playing and drumming to the forefront of the mix, something Greta Van Fleet clearly did not pick up on. The result of their piss-poor production is a sound that lacks any sort of dynamics, feeling uncomfortably flat and sterile (ESPECIALLY considering the type of music they're playing).
The final nail in Greta's artistic coffin comes in the form of their songwriting, a hideous conglomerate of cliches, derivative structures/instrumentation choices, and a glaring lack of originality. "Flower Power" tries to strike some peculiar balance between "Your Time Is Gonna Come" and "The Battle of Evermore", with mandolin and organ competing for prominence in a track that's as blatant a grab-bag of Zeppelin tricks as you will see from a band that claims to be "original". However, perhaps the most impressive part about the songwriting as a whole is that when you strip it to its very core, it is stunningly bland in ways that the dullest AOR bands could not dream of. Songs like these could have been good with elite instrumentalists, but with mediocre players like these dudes, they are instead shown for what they really are. Rudimentary chord progressions combined with some of the worst, most inept lyricism you will hear this decade is a combination modern-day Motley Crue would be proud of.
At the end of the day, Greta Van Fleet represent more than just a nostalgia-whorish rip-off band: they represent the death throes of one of the most impactful genres in the history of Western music. If a band as unabashedly devoted to borderline plagiarizing the sounds of the past is what is being held up as a premiere example of good mainstream rock music in 2018, it's time to admit that rock's days as a cultural zeitgeist are well and truly done. In another decade or so, it's very possible society will view rock in the same way many of us view jazz today: an archaic genre that defined our culture at a particular point in time, but was driven to near-extinction by a fanbase adamantly against the genre's evolving with the times. If this realization saddens you, I sincerely apologize. But if you are of the belief that this dog*** Greta Van Fleet album represents all that is good in music and that all other contemporary music genres are complete trash, I have news for you: hip-hop is not the reason rock music is dying. You are.
