In a new interview with Sweetwater, Anthrax members have released a statement addressing rock and metal fans.
Guitarist Scott Ian said:
“It’s funny how that seems to come up every couple of years. It must sell magazines or these days it’s good clickbait, I guess. Every couple of years, the ‘rock is dead’ thing has to come up. Someone must be profiting off of that; otherwise, it would go away.”
Drummer Charlie Benante said:
“I have a theory about it. The reason why they say it is because there’s been an influx of different types of music that have come in in the last 20 years to almost replace it. Or you have country music, which has taken America by storm — in places that you would never think country music would be popular. You have rap music, which has taken America by storm; you have EDM. So, you have all these different forms of music. So where is rock gonna go? It’s gonna be pushed a little bit back to where it should be — the underground.
“When I go see IRON MAIDEN, when I go see SLIPKNOT, when I hear TOOL has a No. 1 record, I don’t say rock is dead.”
Frank Bello added:
“You can’t say it’s dead. It belongs, for me… I want it out there, like the hip-hop stuff. And I think it’s cool — it’s my thing, underground. And that’s always been cool, ’cause it’ll rise. Of course, it’s all cycles. It’ll come back again. There’ll be a GUNS N’ ROSES one day that’ll come back and make this amazing record… There’ll be another GUNS N’ ROSES, a younger [band].”
Charlie continued:
“There is something happening like that, with young bands like GRETA VAN FLEET and stuff like that. So rock is not dead.”
Added Frank:
“You can’t write rock off. It never will die. For people who say that, I think they hear people say that. And do you really know what’s going on? Are you listening? Maybe you’re just listening to what’s out in social media. Don’t do that.”