Music Month II: Top 10 Rock Bands of All Time

Greetings, reader!

For the final post of the second edition of Music Month, I'm going for quite the ambitious topic - the top 10 rock bands of all time. I want to be clear that these are my top 10 all-time favorite bands on a very subjective level, as the 'objectively greatest' / most impactful and iconic bands have been listed many times and such a ranking would be less personal.

Usually, I limit my honorable mentions to five. Today, there are about two hundred bands that I feel would deserve a mention. I've tried my best to limit them to just the ones that have a really, really special place in my heart.

Here are my honorable mentions: Aerosmith, Anti-Flag, Apulanta, Awesome Snakes, Black Flag, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Dire Straits, Dream Theater, Dropkick Murphys, Eppu Normaali, Flogging Molly, Foo Fighters, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Haken, Journey, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Meat Puppets, Metallica, Mötley Crue, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, No Use, Poison, Queen, Radiohead, Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Scandinavian Music Group, Sex Pistols, Slash ft. Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators, Squealers, Säätövara, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Ataris, The Offspring, The Rolling Stones, The Who, TOTO, U2, UFO, Unknown Decoy, Ursus Factory, Van Halen, ZZ Top.

10. Pink Floyd

My dear friend Olli once described Pink Floyd like this: you take a chord, and you stay on that chord, for like much longer than one would expect, and do all sorts of things while staying on that same chord for such a long time - and when the chord eventually changes, it feels like a monumental, earth-shattering moment. That's a pretty apt description.

One of the quintessential prog rock bands, Pink Floyd found its way into my heart through their wildly atmospheric soundscapes, with Richard Wright's synth layers and David Gilmour's guitar masterstrokes especially doing their part to create a dreamy, psychedelic sound quite like no other. A typical question among Pink Floyd fans is "which is their best album, The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon?", to which the correct answer is "Wish You Were Here" - but really, just the fact that one band did those three works of art (not to mention Meddle) speaks volumes.

9. Rage Against the Machine

"YEAH I'M ROLLING DOWN RODEO WITH A SHOTGUN, THESE PEOPLE AIN'T SEEN A BROWN-SKINNED MAN SINCE THEIR GRANDPARENTS BOUGHT ONE"

Speaking of unique sounds - out of all the bands that combine the street cred of 90's hip hop, the brutally rocking sounds of heavy metal, the sheer fucking attitude of punk rock, and the sick groove of funk, well, Rage Against the Machine is the only such band I know of. If there's one band who you can always recognize in a heartbeat without mistake, it's this insane genre combination that works so much better than one would think on paper and just goes so fucking hard.

"NETWORKS AT WORK, KEEPING PEOPLE CALM; YA KNOW THEY WENT AFTER KING, WHEN HE SPOKE OUT ON VIETNAM"

With their passion for civil rights and the liberal movement heavily showing in all of their music, RATM is the essential protest music artist for modern rock fans like myself. There's nothing like Killing in the Name to fuel one's anger at the still-broken system of my dear secondary home country, nothing like blasting Wake Up on the drums while fully immersed in the serious issues that banger is about, nothing like turning the volume to the max while listening to Know Your Enemy and just feeling the band's well-reasoned rage spark something deep within you like a cleansing spiritual experience.

"SOME OF THOSE THAT WORK FORCES, ARE THE SAME THAT BURN CROSSES"

Also, I'd like to point out that the band once teamed up with documentarian Michael Moore to shoot the music video for Sleep Now in the Fire in the very heart of Wall Street, and they played there until the police showed up to arrest them, which is up there among the very coolest things a rock band has ever done. The next day, Fox News dubbed them "a pro-terrorist group" for speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian people, and it just so happens that RATM has quite a few songs about that sort of propaganda bullshit.

"BELIEVIN' ALL THE LIES THAT THEY'RE TELLIN YA, BUYIN' ALL THE PRODUCTS THAT THEY'RE SELLIN' YA, THEY SAY 'JUMP' AND YOU SAY 'HOW HIGH', YOU BRAIN-DEAD YOU GOT A BULLET IN YOUR HEAD"

8. Less Than Jake

Then for something much more laid-back - this ska punk band is definitely the least well-known and least iconic band that made it into my top 10, as they have been a massive favorite on a subjective level for a long time. Based in Gainesville, Florida, and making songs that cover many topics such as living in Gainesville, Florida, being raised in Gainesville, Florida and wanting to leave yet not being able to leave Gainesville, Florida, Less Than Jake are just such an ultimate feel-good band with their fun energy and creative fusion and skate punk and ska tropes.

I found this brilliantly titled group via the use of their song That's Why They Call It a Union in the soundtrack to Tony Hawk's Underground 2, a childhood favorite that is an amazing fantasy-comedy game as well as a pretty decent skateboarding game. I enjoyed the song so much that I had to look the band up and listen to their other material, only to find that this wonderful song wasn't even among their best material. What a breath of fresh air this band is.

7. Rush

When it comes to prog rock, Rush is the one giant that manages to oust even the Pinkest of Floyds in my view. This Canadian trio has taken the ideas of out-of-the-box creativity to some wild extremes in terms of rhythm, melody and songwriting structures, which has made the world of music infinitely richer with the existence of masterpieces like 2112 and Xanadu.

The genius maestro at the backbone of the band always was my all-time favorite drummer and absolute hero Neil Peart, although the value of Geddy Lee shredding bass, keyboards and vocals simultaneously cannot be understated (nor can guitarist Alex Lifeson's otherworldly use of scales and modes). For the part of me that enjoys imaginative, barrier-breaking music, you really can't do much better than Rush.

6. Green Day

As of June 20th last year, I've been a twenty-three-year-old man. Of course, this comes with the scientifically baffling exception that whenever I listen to Green Day, I'm fourteen again.

There are many bands that are nostalgic for me, but Green Day nostalgia is just on another level. Listening to their music is sticking a f**king pin into time, suddenly flooding my memories with my own teenage years and everything that went with life at the time when I first went down the Green Day rabbit hole. I had a good chuckle looking at my Spotify Wrapped last year, because despite the multitudes of new music I had found, Green Day was somehow my #1 most-listened-to-band in the lord's year 2022. It must be an accumulation of all those times I've added a timeless modern classic like When I Come Around or 21st Century Breakdown to spice up a playlist, and all the days I felt like going with some ultimate comfort nostalgia.

Discovering Green Day during my first years as a drummer and a songwriter made it damn sure that both my drumming and my songwriting will always carry the strong influence of Tré Cool and Billie Joe Armstrong with them. When I was tasked with writing the music for some lyrics that my band Säätövara's bass player Riku had written, I figured that a 90's style pop punk song would be appropriate because Riku and I both grew up to a Green Day soundtrack, and I ended up composing what can only be described as a love letter to Green Day (you can find it on Spotify under Säätövara - Veikon Sienipiisi). Out of all different kinds of music out there, the simple teenage angst -fueled pop punk of Green Day will always be one of my favorites.

5. Guns N' Roses

Is Guns N' Roses the best name for a band in history? Possibly yes, certainly in the running, but not necessarily. However, what I will say is that no other band has a name quite as accurate for their style of music. The title really says it all - for a band that did some of the most wild, dangerous and energetic hard rock of their time, while also breaking our hearts with some of the most emotional and gripping power ballads in rock music, you just can't come up with a better name. Out Ta Get Me, Welcome to the Jungle, You Could Be Mine - that's the guns. And November Rain, Don't Cry, Estranged - that's the roses.

Adding my love for this band is my love for their story - having read the biographies of Slash, Axl Rose, Duff McKagan and even Steven Adler, I've been very invested in their unique and dramatic story for a long time. This made it into the sweetest of payoffs when three members of the original lineup finally buried the hatchet some years ago, and I got to see Axl, Slash and Duff on the same stage, which had felt like an impossible scenario for so long until it happened. Much love for this chaotic, utterly wonderful band.

4. Iron Maiden

For a Finnish male rock musician, I'm about 100x less into metal music than one might expect. I never fully got into the world of metal, at least on the level as my many, many metalhead friends have. As far as the subgenres of rock go, I've always a much bigger spot in my heart for prog rock, punk rock, hard rock and OG rock n' roll than I have for metal. Nothing against heavy metal, mind you - I greatly appreciate the genre and many of its bands, songs and musicians - it just hasn't ever been my #1 thing like it is for most Finnish male rock musicians in my generation.

So, yeah, of course I'm an Iron Maiden fan. It's the cliché favorite metal band for people who aren't that into metal, and at least in my case, the stereotype fits. Ever since my brother Ville discovered Iron Maiden through a CD burned by our cousin, which kicked off with The Trooper, we've been upping the Irons as proud members of one of the most fierce and loyal fanbases in music. There are a million little things that come together to form my love for the band: the dramatic and atmospheric lyrics, the brilliantly dynamic song structures, the heroic guitar harmonies and epic modulations, the addictive 80's NWOBHM sounds, Bruce Dickinson's Shakespearean style of singing and of course, the engine that has kept the band running with his creative vision and fierce passion for all these decades, Steve f**king Harris. When you write songs like Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Hallowed Be Thy Name and Brave New World, you deserve a lifetime spot in my all-time favorite bands.

Also, their live energy absolutely rules, even at their current old age.

3. AC/DC

If you're reading this blog, you very likely know me as a person, and if you know me as a person, you've possibly heard of my secondary band Squealers. And if you've heard 5 seconds or more of any Squealers song, it's probably quite clear that I'm a lifelong AC/DC fan.

I remember overhearing AC/DC's T.N.T. as a very little kid, when my Dad was showing my older brother Ville what rock music is all about. I was curious to learn more, but my parents gave me somewhat evasive answers, figuring that I might be too young for music about Hell and sex and booze and guns and whatever the f**k Who Made Who is about. In what is possibly my earliest music-listening memory, my Mom had left me downstairs to play while having a B-I-N-G-O children's record playing in the background, and the genius that I was had managed to eject the CD and switch into AC/DC's Live album, to the absolute shock of my mother when she re-entered the room. Say what you will, that little dude knew what he wanted to be all about.

As I mentioned in last week's post, I was nine when my Dad took me to see my first rock n' roll concert - the Aussie legends themselves, performing at Helsinki's Olympiastadion. This live experience blew my mind, and I've carried it with me ever since. No matter how much my taste in music has evolved over the years, learning to appreciate complex rhythms and exotic harmonies and creative melodies, there's just something about a 3-minute song with a simple riff, three chords, Phil Rudd playing the basic 4/4 beat for the whole time, and Bon Scott belting out semi-nonsensical street poetry, that hits different.

2. Rise Against

There's music that makes your heart race. There's music that makes you pump your fists. And then there's music that hits the very core of your values and who you are as a person, fueling you with pure and raw passion, and that music for me is Rise Against.

The only band whose lyrics resonate with my worldview and political opinions even more than the similarly titled Rage Against the Machine, this is a band that has spoken to me on such a level that I consider myself to be a better person because of them. Lines from discovering their music in high school can be drawn to choices I've made in life - I reckon that their pacifist anthem Hero of War had a hand in my journey to choosing civil service over the army, just like being blown away by the power of environmental rant The Good Left Undone very possibly sent me on the path that had me officially joining Finland's Green Party after the bogus election results less than a month ago.

While there's a lot to love in the compositional side of Rise Against (no drummer has influenced my playing style with Säätövara as much as Brandon Barnes), the biggest reason for the Chicago-based punk group being this high on my list is most definitely their lyrics. Of course, it helps that the messages come across in drastic, fast-paced and adrenaline-fueled compositions that channel the fury and desparation of what they're singing about with perfection. But the lyrics themselves - that's what it's all about.

Take Make It Stop (September's Children), for example. In September 2011, there were several teenage suicides in the U.S., by LGBTQ+ youths who had been bullied and hadn't gotten the help they needed. As a reaction to this, Rise Against wrote Make It Stop, with the vital message of "Humanity really needs to get its god damn shit together RIGHT FUCKING NOW" coming across with gripping perfection, with phrases like "What God would damn a heart / What God drove us apart" and "Too much blood has flown from the wrists / Of the children shamed for who they chose to kiss" and "It's always darkest just before the dawn / So stay awake with me, let's prove them wrong", not to mention the instrumental section on top of which vocalist Tim McIlrath reads the names and ages of the victims. The fastest way to bring me to tears is reading the YouTube comment section of Make It Stop's music video, which is just filled with stories from people who credit still being alive to this song's existence as a helping hand in a cold world. When you think of the power of music, and what good music can do in one's life, the greatest example is music like this, credited with saving human lives.

And that's just one example. I could've just as easily discussed Prayer of the Refugee, Swing Life Away, The Good Left Undone and a multitude of other songs, which are roughly on the same level of life-altering power. I wouldn't be the activist-spirited civil rights enthusiast I am today if it wasn't for Rise Against, and I sure as hell would've had an even harder time getting through shit like the Trump years if I hadn't had this band's message resonating with everything that was going on.

1. The Beatles

I was at a university event in the fall of 2021, when one of the then-new freshmen came up to me and said, "You're the Beatles guy, right?". My first impulse was to correct him, saying that The Beatles Guy is professor Jouni Koskimäki, one of our teachers who had written his dissertation on The Beatles and has been described as the leading Beatles expert in the Nordic countries. Then it hit me - Jouni had retired the previous year, and the new freshmen wouldn't know who he was. I, on the other hand, was the third-year student who was always at the campus drinking coffee from a Beatles mug, had put together a Beatles cover band project for my favorite professor's retirement party the previous year, and was writing my bachelor's thesis on the use of the Beatles' music in music education. It dawned on me, as with a slightly bewildered look I nodded and said, "Yeah, I suppose I am the Beatles guy".

Before my subjective love for the Fab Four materialized, the foundation had been laid in the form of a more objective appreciation for the band's massive and unmatched influence. My junior high school music teacher Rami-Jussi had made sure that the astronomical influence of changing the course of popular music with revolutionary takes on music videos and album covers, having a major part to play in the very birth of genres like heavy metal and prog rock, and breaking every sort of popularity record such as having more chart-topping singles than any other artist (a record they still hold, over 50 years later) wouldn't be lost on us. Well, on me, at least - I'm not sure if anyone else was listening. I know I sure as hell was.

And when I started to realize, on top of this historical admiration, that their music f**king rocks, there was no stopping the hype train. Years later, I proudly roam the halls of our campus with the reputation of "Beatles guy", having recorded the drum tracks for both Säätövara albums with sticks that I brought from Abbey Road in London, regularly ending most Spotify playlists with the three last tracks of the Abbey Road medley and ending most karaoke nights with a heartfelt rendition of All You Need Is Love.

Thank you for reading! This post concludes Music Month II, and next week I'll return to my usual movie/TV themes with a banger - in honor of May th 4th, a.k.a. International Star Wars day, I'm ranking (almost) all the Star Wars movies AND television shows!