Ghost frontman Tobias Forge has responded to long-standing claims from Gene Simmons that rock is “dead.”
He has since argued the point that that younger bands are continuing to rise and headline in ways the KISS bassist refuses to acknowledge.
Simmons has repeated the statement over the past decade, blaming the music industry, streaming platforms and younger fans for what he sees as a collapse in iconic new rock acts. Most recently, he said that no artist in the past forty years has reached the stature of legacy bands like The Beatles.
In a new interview with Consequence, Forge rejected that view. “I understand that it’s been sparse, but with the disappearance of a lot of bands that I like, KISS being one of them, I do believe that with time there will be more headlining rock bands,” he said.
Forge also pointed to what he called a generational shift in how newer bands are now being perceived. “There is this strange time phenomenon that happened somewhere in the 2000s where everything that came after was just labelled as new, especially by people who were in their thirties or forties back then and now are in their sixties,” he said. “Which I think is an age thing.”
The comments build on a similar message Forge shared earlier this year, where he said that Ghost themselves were proof that new bands could still grow and succeed on large stages. “There has been this ongoing chatter that no new bands can become big,” he previously told British music magazine NME. “Ghost, as well as a few others, are living proof that that is not true.”
He has a fair point with that one too. Forge pointed to newer acts like Sleep Token as evidence that emerging bands are connecting with audiences in meaningful ways. “Obviously, you can still become a bigger band,” he said.
Despite the uphill battle that many bands currently seem to be facing, there are still many that slip through the cracks. Success can be found in all kinds of places, and Ghost are living proof of it.
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