Greta Van Fleet - The Battle at Garden's Gate ALBUM REVIEW

-
“Oh, I love Led Zeppelin!” ~ Peter Parker, 2023.


If you don’t know the lore behind Greta Van Fleet, you might be pretty confused on why I used a quote from Spider-Man: Far From Home as the intro. When this band here first started off, they were relentlessly compared to legendary rock band Led Zeppelin. There’s nothing wrong with wearing your influences on your sleeves by any means, but this almost felt like a very well-done parody of Robert Plant and company. Even Elton John has called the band out on this after performing with them. With this new album, The Battle at Garden’s Gate, they’re trying to shed away some of those notions while going for more ambitious tracks. How did it go? Let’s find out.

Well, at least they don’t sound like Led Zeppelin anymore. I wanna get out of the way that everyone involved in the band is incredibly talented. Hell, I’d wanna be compared to Led Zeppelin’s music no matter if it’s positive or negative comparisons. It’s just that the ambition they’re going for with songs that are almost 10 minutes, stringing out the runtime for reasons unknown, just don’t work. I can sit here all day and say that ‘Oh, these guys are talented as fuck.’ all day, but there’s one massive issue here, and they still don’t have an identity. Instead of Led Zeppelin, Greta Van Fleet just sounds like Rush on this album. Keep in mind that I think Rush is incredibly overrated too, so that’s not helping. As I said, some of the songs go on here for too long, but for the most part, the performances are actually quite good from each member of the band.

If I’m being totally honest, Greta Van Fleet is in a very unique spot. I don’t think The Battle at Garden’s Gate is a bad album. It’s actually very good on its own, but if you’ve heard Rush or Led Zeppelin, they just seem like borderline copycats, it’s not that great. I’ve thought the same thing about their past projects, but I’ll say this again since this is the first time I’m formally reviewing them. What kneecaps all of their projects is that they’re devoid of any type of identity. I couldn’t tell you what a Greta Van Fleet song sounded like if I couldn’t use the words ‘Led Zeppelin,’ and that’s the issue. While I do appreciate the ambition on this album and the group trying for something new, Greta Van Fleet are in desperate need of something that makes them Greta Van Fleet and not Rush or Led Zeppelin offshoots.


5/10


Listen here

YouTube Music




The Battle at Garden’s Gate is a Republic Records release.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lil Yachty - Let’s Start Here. ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
I gotta keep holding to my promises about reviewing. I always love it when an artist takes a risk with their material. Whether or not it works out, I usually admire the risk and appreciate the fact that any artist can do something out of their comfort zone. Either way, the artist in question today is Lil Yachty, a rapper that has basically become a joke the longer his career’s gone on. However, going into a new genre out of left field isn’t totally new to rap. Childish Gambino jumping into the world of neo-soul with Awaken, My Love! , along with later projects from Mac Miller and Tyler, the Creator having more jazz influences, have proven that turning to a new genre for new ideas has worked out pretty well. Yachty, however, has turned to psychedelic rock in the vein of Tame Impala for this new album, Let’s Start Here. to mark the new chapter of his career. Let’s get into it. Having stuck around with Yachty during the rough patches, I can easily say that Let’s Start Here. is his best ...
Read more

Kendrick Lamar - GNX ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
Woah, a new review? After this long? Yeah, sure. Why not? I got some plans in the works to keep this active in some form, and I’ll show off some more details in the post after this! What timing for an album to end up bringing this little site back, even if it’s just for a little bit of time. The last post on here was last June, and a lot has happened in my life since then, whether it’s in music or my personal life. Arguably, the biggest moment in music of the year was the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, which exploded just before this summer with “Like That,” a song off of the first of two Future and Metro Boomin’ albums from this year, WE DON’T TRUST YOU . I don’t need to go into just how massive this beef was (and in still is in some ways), but if you need one major takeaway, I’ll say this: One of the biggest hits of the year, regardless of genre, essentially boiled down to Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile for four-and-a-half minutes. “Not Like Us,” a song where one of the m...
Read more

Porter Robinson - Nurture ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
I wanna just lay in a field of grass, but I’m allergic to pollen :( I’ve always had a very strange relationship with electronic music. The bad music I’ve heard in the genre has been some of the worst music I’ve ever heard, and the good stuff is some of the greatest music I’ve ever heard. For some context, we have artists like The Chainsmokers on one end, and Daft Punk on the other. There are some subgenres in here too that work. Electropop is one of them, being an obvious fusion of pop and electronic music. In the little community of the AOTY website, the users there have been hyped as hell for this Porter Robinson album, Nurture . It’s apparently his first in seven years, and I’ve only heard one single from it, titled “Musician.” While it wasn’t the best electropop song I’ve heard, it’s certainly an interesting sound that I think can work pretty well. So, with how anticipated it is in the AOTY community, I figured I should take a listen and see what all the fuss is about. Let’s get in...
Read more