Is Hard Rock About To Roar Back Into The Mainstream? Hard rock is not dead; it has merely retreated to the range to plot its comeback. Although metal has never been pop the way Madonna, ‘N Sync, or Taylor Swift are pop, for decades the genre’s most accessible bands maintained a strong presence in the musical mainstream.

From genre originators Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath to the nü- metal bands of the TRL era, hard rock produced some of the most popular, visible, bestselling, and influential bands in the world. Justice League: The New Frontier Full Movie Part 1 on this page. And although populist heavy guitar music has spent the past decade- plus relegated to a fertile niche market, a grand return to the spotlight might already be in motion. Less than two years after I prematurely predicted the genre’s extinction, we may need to brace ourselves for a hard rock revival. Before I explain, let’s back up for a moment to consider a different critically maligned genre that recently enjoyed its own critical evaluation. A few years ago, when the music press got all worked up about an alleged emo revival, the constant refrain from emo denizens was: What revival? We’ve been here all along. Both sides were correct in their own ways: On one hand, emo had never gone away, it had just fallen out of fashion with media tastemakers and trend- conscious metropolitan listeners.

On the other hand, the scene was now exploding in a way that couldn’t be ignored, both in terms of creative vitality and grassroots popularity. And with many of the classic emo bands that influenced this new generation enjoying a fresh evaluation due to the usual 2.

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The genre that gave us Through Being Cool was suddenly cool again. It was a remarkable turnaround. OK, now back to hard rock: Last weekend Columbus hosted the tenth installment of Rock On The Range, billed as the biggest rock festival in the US. Once again promoters Danny Wimmer Productions (DWP) and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) assembled a massive pile of modern rock radio favorites — headliners included Disturbed, Rob Zombie, and Red Hot Chili Peppers — seasoned with a handful of niche stars and curiosities from across the heavy music spectrum. And once again, the soccer- centric Mapfre Stadium was sold out all weekend, teeming with loud music lovers in a wide variety of black T- shirts. I ventured into the madness on Sunday, when the lineup skewed the closest to my taste with sets by At The Drive- In, Deftones, and Death From Above 1.

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And even with those personal favorites on tap, the culture shock was immediate. Compared to most major US festivals, which have come to be ruled by EDM dance parties, blockbuster reunions, and an assortment of recent critical sensations, Rock On The Range felt like an alternate universe: one where mid- aughts retro relic Wolfmother plays “Woman” to tens of thousands; where an old skate- punk standby like Pennywise, the kind of band that’s usually ignored by the Coachella kids, commands a fiercely moving throng of devotees; where English metalcore stars Bring Me The Horizon non- ironically engage in the kind coordinated headbanging that once made Attack Attack! In fact this “alternate universe” is very much reflective of the real world; it just represents a segment of the population whose taste is not often represented in the media. This kind of rock — loud, aggressive, boorish headbanging fare unmoored to contemporary notions of cool — may not rule the charts anymore, but it remains a mainstream unto itself. And if a new Billboard report is to be believed, the genre could be in for a big summer.

Per the report, fests like Rock On The Range, Fort Rock, Carolina Rebellion, Welcome To Rockville, and next weekend’s Rocklahoma remain a major draw in “secondary and tertiary” markets. These are cities where people largely don’t care about what’s hip, a notion Cory Brennan — who manages acts including Slipknot, Megadeth, the Misfits, and Lamb Of God — humorously communicated to Billboard: “Sponsors, brands, and media may think that Tame Impala and X Ambassadors are sexy and exciting to talk about, but the rest of the country couldn’t give two shits.” AEG Live’s hard rock guru Joe Litvag put it more diplomatically: “You get outside of LA and New York, there’s a lot of nooks and crannies out there. There are rock fans in every one of those nooks and crannies, and our job is to speak to them.” And the nation’s rock promoters are speaking loud and clear. Ozzy Osbourne’s scene- defining Ozzfest is joining forces with Slipknot’s popular Knotfest for a one- off event this September called Ozzfest Meets Knotfest. Next year’s annual Ship.

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Rocked cruise is already sold out with headliners Breaking Benjamin, Papa Roach, and Alter Bridge on deck. Mimicking country music’s Megaticket program, which allows fans to purchase passes for a whole season’s worth of concerts, Live Nation just launched its Ticket To Rock program, allowing fans bulk access to for package tours including Disturbed/Breaking Benjamin, Korn/Rob Zombie, and Slipkot/Marilyn Manson. And, as if this demographic’s parallels to Donald Trump’s flyover country coalition needed to be spelled out, the Make America Rock Again tour will bring together rock veterans Trapt, Saliva, Saving Abel, Alien Ant Farm, Crazytown, 1. Stones, Drowning Pool, and Tantric this fall. Hard rock as a self- contained scene is undeniably surging. But more intriguingly, the genre seems to be gaining an audience beyond its longtime partisans. The Guns N’ Roses and Misfits reunions have been greeted with enthusiasm far and wide.

Fashion designer Jerry Lorenzo, whose Fear Of God label has released retro Metallica and Nirvana shirts and supplied metal- oriented merch for Kanye West and Justin Bieber, has recently been rocking Slipknot T- shirts. Two decades into their career, adventurous hard rock cult favorites Deftones are suddenly gaining positive attention from media outlets that have traditionally ignored them — us included — while a recent Rolling Stone retrospective assigned nü- metal originators Ko. Rn’s self- titled debut a level of influence similar to that of the Velvet Underground or the Ramones.

The timing seems right for a reevaluation. Writer Steven Hyden’s smart 2. The Winners’ History Of Rock And Roll pointed out that from Zeppelin to Bon Jovi to Metallica, populist rock bands that begin as critical pariahs tend to be embraced decades down the line. Yesterday, our own Tom Breihan noted that the same thing is happening in rap: Once music becomes old enough to qualify as “classic,” nostalgia tends to trump critical distance. About 1. 5- 2. 0 years since their genesis, could the likes of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit be the next generation of hard rock bands to experience a reclamation? Watch The Swan Princess: A Royal Family Tale Online Fandango. One the more fascinating threads in Billboard’s report was promoters’ ambitions to crossbreed a modern rock lineup with more mainstream- accepted or critically acclaimed bands. In a Pitchfork feature on the emo revival, Greg Horbal, a former member of ambitious emo collective the World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, bemoaned an invisible wall between the “indie rock” and “emo” scenes: “[Andrew Savage] from Parquet Courts used to be in Teenage Cool Kids, and we would definitely have played with them at some point.

There is no way we’ll ever be put on the same show with Parquet Courts.” The same kind of class division bars many Rock On The Range- type bands from getting booked alongside acts like Jack White or the aforementioned Tame Impala. That’s why landing a blockbuster general- interest band like Red Hot Chili Peppers was such a coup for Rock On The Range. Fest founder Danny Wimmer told Billboard he wants to see the walls come down: Nirvana didn’t break alternative, there was something already brewing and Nirvana was just the band that you could point out. Go to your grocery store, there’s metal imagery everywhere. Foo Fighters are selling out stadiums, that’s a rock act. Black Keys is a rock act, Jack White is a rock act.