New Rock Mafia is the collective made up of three Canadian rock bands: cleopatrick, Ready the Prince, and ZIG MENTALITY.
New Rock Mafia is a community of musicians, fans, writers, photographers, and more who are bonded together over their shared interest in guitar-driven rock music.
New Rock Mafia is a beginning to an end of modern rock music that is overrun by the fake, the motto of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll," and the light pop beats chosen over loud guitar driven music. It is a war cry from the youths of today wanting something of substance to listen to, something real and most importantly: loud.
It's been done before, actually.
All of it, nothing's original about it.
But in my lifetime, and as well for most of the people who support New Rock Mafia, it feels fresh and exciting, and that's because we've never had the chance to experience something like it before.
New Rock Mafia is what grunge was to 80s popular music: a reaction, a counterculture, a collective of truth and guitars.
The 80s brought us the death of rock 'n roll as we originally knew it to be — blues rock, guitar driven rock, rock that was for the most part, organic and not industry planted, it was real music from real people who were not dolled up, picture perfect people. Rock used to be people who off stage you probably couldn't recognize, because there was no glitz, no glamour, nothing. Just normal, average people playing music and having a good time.
Hair metal bands, the general term for bands such as Motley Crue, Poison, Def Leppard, and more were rock bands popularized during the 80s that were less of original bluesy rock 'n roll and something entirely different, something almost trying to be nostalgic. At the same time, synth-driven pop music was very popularized, and took over the charts completely. People wanted music videos and not radio, wanted pretty faces and vocals, easy listening and not to be made to think or feel deeply. Rock was nothing like it had been before: it was dying, it was dead, it had its day and now it was leaving. What was put in its place, not everyone liked.
The people who didn't like the popular music of the 80s were young teens and adults who you'd find in punk scenes, who probably grew up on a healthy diet of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd. Young people who loved loud guitars and music of substance, of meaning, of something real, of something unique and off the charts. Something not pushed at you by a label, something homegrown and rock 'n roll — blues influenced music, guitar driven music. These people said "NO" to what was on the radio and TV, they walked their own path instead, they supported and created a style of music they believed to be true and loved. They took all of their passion, all of their fury, all of their pain and even happiness too, and put it into their music. They didn't try to be something that they knew would sell, they tried to be themselves, just as those who came before them did, long before the 80s and the commercialization of rock. Long before rock meant a formulaic product, long before it was something long dead and packaged into a nostalgic trip and not something that was currently happening. When rock 'n roll was alive and didn't need a label, it simply just was everything. It was the air that filled your lungs, it wasn't a style, it didn't need to be a style, because it was all there was. It went unspoken like friendship. Rock 'n roll had the entire world in its clutches, then the 80s came and killed it.
But the late 80s dug up rock 'n roll's coffin, and the 90s pulled all of the nails out and opened the door: the 90s raised rock 'n roll from the dead.
Bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains took what the public easily swallowed, pop music and soulless, industry-endorsed rock music, and made them choke on it. It forced them to care about rock music again, it was back on the charts, in record stores, on your radio, performing down the street, corrupting your teenagers, your 20-somethings. It was alive and stayed alive by the youth back then and as the 90s went on, it fizzled out a little, but with the turn of the century, nu-metal, emo rock, and punk bands took it and transformed it, they kept it alive and going. Indie rock stood hand-in-hand as well: indie rock bands who often played blues rock, the closest to sound in what rock 'n roll was originally, kicked & screamed their way up the charts. Subgenre after subgenre of rock existed and people cared about it, like they once did in the 70s. Then One Direction came and everything shifted.
One Direction - one boy band of many from 2011 onwards, came and put pop music back on trend, back in the top 40 charts heavily. Pop always sold, but One Direction was one of the biggest musical culture shifts in a LONG time, and it changed the music industry entirely, much like how The Beatles came to America and everything shifted as well. Do not underestimate the buying power of young women: they make the greats.
From 2011 onward, pop boy bands, bands, and singers came crashing over all the charts, even in rock. Rock suddenly - almost overnight - became overloaded with soft pop rock tracks, with bands ditching their loud, noisy guitar driven sound for something easier, something lighter, something more digestible, something that appealed to families. And that, that was the start of the death of modern rock as we know it to be.
Rock mainly stayed as it was - bluesy, punk, indie, underground, DIY, real, until 2013. The last new modern rock band to make guitar driven music in 2013 and succeed financially from it, was Catfish and the Bottlemen. Arctic Monkeys gave their last breath for a few years with the release of their fifth studio album, AM, which did excellently well, in 2013. That year also brought alternative pop music to brighter lights, which stormed the charts. Regardless of bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen and Arctic Monkeys, guitar driven music had very little hope of carrying on, and therefore, sunk into the ground once again. Rock was dead.
Fast forward: it's 2017. Whispers of a chant from long ago is making its way into the ears of the youth. "Highway Tune," a guitar driven, hard rock song reminiscent of Led Zeppelin, was climbing up the charts by a young band, half the band not even of legal drinking age yet. Could this be it, could this be the start of rock rising for a second time?
Not yet, unfortunately.
The band was Greta Van Fleet, and while in the few years they've been on the public's radar and making the charts, breaking records, they haven't done anything new, possibly due to the fact that there's only Greta Van Fleet. Greta Van Fleet are alone in what they do, they do not bring a sense of community with them, they do not intend to save rock, just to play it.
The bands that make up the collective known as New Rock Mafia however, came with a mission and were ready to be loud & proud about it.
cleopatrick, Ready the Prince, and ZIG MENTALITY all began playing rock music under similar circumstances: they loved rock 'n roll, loved guitar driven rock, and wanted to play it themselves. That's what they did, but when they met each other and shared their minds with each other, they knew what they had to do.
They had to form something that brought together not only them, but anyone else who shared similar feelings as them, who loved the same kind of rock music and disliked what was on the charts right now. It was the same notion that sparked the bands who made up what we call the grunge movement of the late 80s and early 90s, in reaction to the music that the 80s boosted. They didn't want to follow a trend, they didn't want to make music that they knew would surely sell, they wanted to make their own path and that's what they've done.
New Rock Mafia, the three founding bands: cleopatrick, Ready the Prince, and ZIG MENTALITY have all made guitar driven music that is of substance, meaningful, and is real. It is not easily swallowed, but once down, much pleasure is felt. It is loud, noisy, fuzzy, truthful rock: it is everything that rock needs to be alive again, and they've done it. In them, rock lives, rock thrives, rock rattles and moans and shakes, and burns down everything we have gorged ourselves on in recent years. They've arrived, and they're going to stay here for the long run.
New Rock Mafia, much like rock 'n roll, isn't a singular thing. There's many other youths just like them who make the style of rock that they do, youths who love and support it, young people who surround these three bands and agree with what they're doing and strive to do it along with them. What they're doing is making honest rock, straight up rock, no nostalgia plays, no cash-grabs, nothing soft and easy. Furious and truthful. No bullshit.
New Rock Mafia, as any musical or art scene ever, isn't filled with people who all automatically like each other, but at the very minimum, have trust and hope in each other. It's not a hippie scene like the Deadheads, it's more like the Beat Generation, more like Seattle's grunge scene...There's fights and grumbling, there's everything you'd expect from a family of friends. But most importantly, it's a scene of people who are honest and truthful with each other, who inspire and influence each other, who make space for each other, who listen, who try to open their hearts and minds to each other and understand differences, who make each other better. They are people who are not trying to be anyone but themselves. What bonds all of these diverse, interesting people from all over together is their shared interest in guitar driven music and honesty.
At the end of the day, however, New Rock Mafia is bigger than the individuals that keep it alive, just like the impact of grunge.
It's a new name for a concept that isn't new. It is a culture shift, it is music that is real over music that is a product, it is music that inspires, that influences, that years from now, when we're unfortunately talking about what killed rock again and looking back at when was the last time it was brought back, New Rock Mafia will be what we're looking at. New Rock Mafia will be a historic mark on the long history of rock 'n roll, and so if you care about the future of rock, support it.
It's just rock 'n roll anyway, true rock 'n roll, and if you missed out on it in the 90s, it's back again, you just have to listen.