Popular music critic Anthony Fantano from The Needle Drop channel gave a “NOT GOOD” rating to Greta Van Fleet‘s debut album “Anthem of the Peaceful Army.”
Pointing out that the band’s musicianship and production are by no means bad, Fantano said the main reason behind his poor rating is the fact that the boys ripped off Led Zeppelin too much for his taste.
He said:
“My biggest annoyance with this album is that conceptually, it spits in the face of artistic evolution.
“Because again, while Led Zeppelin, some of the biggest thieves in rock music – they at least had the foresight and the smarts to cover their tracks and at least put some sort of twist on what it is they were ripping off.
“Without at least that baseline level of minimal effort to re-contextualize what they were borrowing, you wouldn’t have Led Zeppelin.
“Even though originality isn’t the be-all-end-all of great music and a record that is purely original and separate from any and all context and musical cultures and movements that we are currently familiar with would most likely turn off most listeners, the struggle to be original and the struggle to stand out pushes music as an art form forward.”
Anthony concluded:
“The unoriginality of this band and this record is deafening and it’s outright shocking. And it has nothing to do with borrowing directly from Led Zeppelin. … The problem with this album is that it openly poo-poos the guiding artistic principles of re-contextualization, change, re-appropriation…
“Maybe some of you feel like I’m overreacting here, but I truly find this band unashamed coattail riding on another artist’s creative journey to be pretty aggravating, especially since the final result pales in comparison and isn’t really that interesting.
“This Greta Van Fleet album, it’s not good.”