Yes, I know Busted came back, but they’re a completely different type of band now, they’re an old nostalgia act like Limp Bizkit and Rob Zombie.

Good, now that I’ve got that out of the way, here’s why rock and metal music needs a new Busted. Take a look at the top songs this year. At the time of writing this, DJ Khaled is number one. Distorted guitar music is out of fashion, replaced by synths and overproduced acoustic guitar. The closest we get are bands like Five Seconds of Summer, who don’t even write their own music, or worse still, groups such as One Direction pretending to play electric guitars live. You might say “Music evolves get over it there are still great bands underground” and go back to listening to your gojira album in peace. What you perhaps don’t realise, is that the death of distorted guitar music in the mainstream may result in the death of distorted guitar.

What entry level bands are there for kids to get into distorted guitar nowadays? “Well the same ones I listened to as a kid, they’re all still popular, like fall out boy (guitars gone), Paramore (reverb indie-pop songs now), All Time Low (pop again), Linkin Park (nope) etc.” Now the new trendy “alternative” (I use that term extremely loosely) acts (not even bands anymore) are twenty one pilots and halsey. Acts that are alternative simply because of the colour of their hair. The type of kids that were getting into alternative music like past generations have are listening to pop music masquerading as “rock” or “emo” or “punk”. This means that they no longer have the first step others had that led to less accessible bands such as A Day to Remember, Asking Alexandria, Enter Shikari etc. This means that more technical bands like Dillinger Escape Plan and Animals As Leaders have less and less hope of the next generation finding them if new generations don’t even listen to more accessible distorted guitar music.

When we’re sitting here wondering why rock music isn’t cool anymore or why people call it “dead” it’s because there’s no bands in the mainstream representing the genre to those completely new to it. If it takes a bunch of pretty boys playing pop rock (as long as they write their own songs) to get people into Meshuggah then so be it.