GRETA VAN FLEET

BATTLE READY CAN ONE OF ROCK’S MOST POLARIZING YOUNG BANDS ONCE AGAIN SILENCE CRITICS WITH THEIR CINEMATIC NEW ALBUM, THE BATTLE AT GARDEN’S GATE? GUITARIST JAKE KISZKA AIMS TO FIND OUT

- JOE BOSSO

“ART IS SUPPOSED TO ELICIT STRONG REACTIONS, ISN’T IT?” Jake Kiszka asks rhetorically. The Greta Van Fleet guitarist is considering the extreme, diametrically opposed responses his band has received since they first topped radio playlists in 2017 with their single, “Highway Tune.” On the one side, there are those who have hailed the Michigan quartet as the brightest young band of this millennium and the redhot shot of adrenaline that rock has sorely needed. On the other side, there are the detractors who have tagged the group as nothing more than competent yet shameless Led Zeppelin clones. It’s a “love ’em or hate ’em” proposition with little gray area in between.

After four years of it, Kiszka isn’t letting any such noise get to him; in fact, he takes a philosophical — and surprisingly welcoming — view of the band’s polarizing nature. “I actually think it’s a beautiful thing,” he says. “There’s something sort of perfect about having one or another direct response to what we’re doing. It’s the essential point, really. Music can affect somebody in a very loving, peaceful or inspirational way, or it can go the other way and you have a determined opposite reaction in which people are infuriated by it. I think that’s the objective of all artists.”

In the years since their arrival, the band (which also includes Kiszka’s two brothers — Josh on lead vocals, Sam on bass and keyboards — along with drummer Danny Wagner) has come a long way, issuing two EPs, Black Smoke Rising