For those musos and vinyl heads on this here website that aren’t aware of this band, Greta Van Fleet is a group of squeaky clean brothers who blatantly rip off Led Zeppelin to the point of near-perfect sonic and stylistic, one-for-one imitation. It’s not even a question of who they are trying to be. It’s practically their gimmick and it’s the controversy that follows them wherever they go.
Leaving behind the fact Led Zep were serial plagiarists themselves, this Disney club of fresh-faced chameleons are deeply guilty of not just taking a few riffs and a chorus here and there. No. they are trying to emulate Zep so brazenly and so unashamedly that when closing your eyes you’d swear you were listening to long-forgotten b-sides from 1970.
Okay, fair enough. Some kids wanna do some LARPing as their rock heroes, you might say. That would be fair. Everyone has their influences and inspiration.
The problem I have is, not just that they have absolutely no authenticity to speak of, it’s that they have fuck all edge, attitude or balls. It’s Soy Rock. It’s Neutered Blues. It’s Eunuch n Roll. And, I’m not just talking about the high register, imitated wails of the singer.
And, they perform with these sorry, half-apologetic, limp faced, feigned enthusiastic looks on their faces because they know they took absolutely zero artistic risks. They are anodyne. It’s Disney kids shit. Total safety.
Even if they were good Led Zep stylists they would still be soulless and empty because they copied a formula without even trying to reserve even one molecule in billions of it for originality or attitude. If they genuinely told me to “get fucked, we love what we do” and owned they are copycats, I could respect them.
But, instead, they cry about the comparisons. They actually tell people to get over it, while with each passing album they go further towards totally photocopying Led Zeps sound and stylings.
Honestly, it’s fucking cringe-inducingly bad. And they are irredeemable cunts. Worse still, I actually know people who like them and would attempt to defend their abhorrent output. But, I put that down to the fact that culture is dying in the modern age and popular music as a whole has generally been utter overproduced, over-hyped, shallow, undigestable swill since the end of the ’90s. We are used to the taste of being served rotting turd with colourful sprinkles on top. So, just lick the surface and you’ll get a nice taste for a second. Just don’t bite down too hard as you’ll just get shit.
Nominated by: Can cunt, will cunt
(More about them from Wiki – DA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Van_Fleet)




