What defines a classic album for you? Does it need to sell by the millions (not so much these days but roll with me) and have had a cultural significance on rock and pop culture at large? Is it something that needs to have the acceptance of the critics and have some sort of artistic gravitas that makes all and sundry stroke their chins (or whatever else floats your boat) over it to be granted that accolade? Everyone has their own take on what makes an album achieve legendary status but one thing for certain is that classic albums are still being made in the modern era.
Yes, we all understand and appreciate the importance of Sabbath and Zeppelin and Floyd and all of the usual standards and you’ll have been told a billion times that you have to own Number Of The Beast, Back In Black, Reign In Blood and Master Of Puppets but Modern Classics is a series that celebrates what’s happened within the world of rock and metal over the past 20 years. Rock didn’t just suddenly stop pumping out great, life-altering records.
We are going to take 1994 as a sort of year zero and celebrate the albums that have shaped today’s contemporary rock landscape. There’ll be albums from the worlds of rock and metal (how could there not be?) but we’re also going to bring you the albums that have shook the modern world from pop-punk, emo, hardcore, deathcore and whatever else you want to call it core.
Alexisonfire, Machine Head, Gallows, Queens Of The Stone Age, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, Converge, Meshuggah, Thrice, System Of A Down, Blink 182, The Mars Volta, Avenged Sevenfold, Paramore…all these bands have released albums that have left an insuppressible mark on today’s rock landscape and can be considered classics and by god, we are going to celebrate them.
If you’re happy with your record collection the way it is then we are not here to tell you that what you hold dear is dated at all. The classics are classics for a reason, right? If, however, you fancy checking out what’s happened over the course of the last 20 years and to either celebrate the albums we bring you every Friday or to check them out for the first time then this is the place for you. Modern Classics, every Friday, right here on Team Rock.
