Des Rocs: “I don’t want to bring anything back. I want to forge a new path in rock in my own image.”

For Des Rocs, To Hell and Back is far more than the title of a new album. It represents years of persistence, rejection, sacrifice and unwavering belief in a vision that has never followed the expected path. After spending much of his career playing to handfuls of people while refusing to compromise his sound, the new record stands as both the culmination of that journey and a statement of intent. Rather than chasing modern production trends, Des Rocs and producer Joe Chiccarelli chose to record the album live, capturing the energy, imperfections and humanity that he believes are missing from much of contemporary rock.

That philosophy extends throughout every aspect of the record. Inspired by classic live albums from artists including Queen, and AC/DC, To Hell and Back embraces dynamics, spontaneity and emotion over perfection. Even serious health issues during the recording process, including spinal injuries and damaged vocals, became part of the album’s identity, with Des Rocs choosing to preserve those performances rather than replace them with technically flawless takes. For him, authenticity will always matter more than perfection.

In our latest Cover Story, V13 catches up with Des Rocs to explore the making of To Hell and Back, why he believes rock music has become too comfortable, and his determination to challenge that by creating something fearless, ambitious and unmistakably his own. We discuss his creative philosophy, his passion for live performance, the lessons learned from touring with The Rolling Stones and Muse, and why his goal isn’t to bring rock music back but to push it somewhere entirely new.

Where did the title To Hell and Back come from, and why did it fit the journey you’ve been on while making it?

“To Hell and Back represents not only the journey of making this album, but also the journey of my entire life and career. Everything about Des Rocs has been against the odds. It has been one of the least obvious projects of the last ten years. I’ve had every door slammed in my face and spent a lifetime playing to almost nobody, night after night, in front of ten or fifteen people and a couple of bartenders. I’ve been doing that since I was thirteen years old. I’ve lived and breathed it, and I’ve lived a pretty crazy life trying to make it. This album feels like the culmination of everything I’ve ever done, both creatively and in terms of the personal journey I’ve been on.”

What drives you to keep doing it?

“I think some part of you has to be delusional. When every sign in the universe tells you not to do it, there has to be an element of switching off your rational brain because no rational person would deal with even one per cent of the obstacles and hurdles I’ve overcome. One part of it is delusion. The other is genuinely believing in the dream I have of what a new rock-and-roll project should look and sound like in this millennium. I’m so passionate about that vision that I wake up every day with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the goal, no matter how far away it might seem.”

What have you learned about yourself throughout that period, and what have you discovered you’re capable of?

“I’m capable of greatly exceeding what I thought I could do, both as a musician, singer and instrumentalist. During the making of this album, I also experienced serious health issues that took me out completely and left me in a level of pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I learned that the power of music is unbelievable. It can push you beyond the natural limitations you think you have. You can force yourself to achieve incredible things if you simply keep going. The only thing everybody who gives up on their dreams has in common is that, at some point, they stopped. If you never give up, you’ve never failed to get there.”

“When every sign in the universe tells you not to do it, there has to be an element of switching off your rational brain because no rational person would deal with even one per cent of the obstacles and hurdles I’ve overcome.”

You’ve spoken about your health and the journey behind the record. When you listened to the finished album for the first time, what emotions did it bring up?

“There was a sense of accomplishment in finishing it, and that feeling doesn’t change regardless of what happens after the release. For me, making the album, completing it and being happy with it is the accomplishment. There was a creative sigh of relief. I could say, ‘I’ve done it. I did what I intended to do.‘”

Tying that into the album’s title and inspiration, what was the recording journey like? Was it fun, difficult or cathartic?

“It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fun at all. We recorded it live as a band. When I say it wasn’t fun, I mean it wasn’t simply a good time from beginning to end. There were plenty of enjoyable moments, but doing it for real as a band was intense, especially when so many shortcuts are available to artists today. We were trying to capture something raw, human and spiritual, something many bands leave on the table by not recording live. There was no copying and pasting. Sometimes we had to perform the same song thirty times before we captured a take we were happy with.”

Where did the idea to record the album live come from, and what were the advantages and disadvantages of working that way?

“It was something I had always wanted to do. I wanted to challenge myself and move outside my comfort zone. I also had the opportunity to work with an incredible producer in Joe Chiccarelli, who helped bring the whole thing to life. On my earlier records, I played all the instruments myself. It was me layering parts on top of myself, which creates an amazing sound, but I’d already done that. I wanted to explore the intangible chemistry of hearing instruments bleed into microphones and air physically moving through the room. I then wanted to combine that with some of the DIY, backpack-producer elements I’ve always embraced.”

Des Rocs // Cover Story #132 // Mon, Aug 17, 2026

What did you want to capture by recording live rather than building everything through copying and pasting in the studio?

“It was important to capture the foundation live: drums, bass and guitar, with everybody playing together. There’s a particular magic in that because it’s how all my favourite records were made. When I listen to many modern rock records, they sound stale, over-compressed and digital. Somehow they’re louder than ever, but I can’t understand what’s happening because I can’t hear anything clearly. Sometimes that approach can be cool or charming, but when everybody has the same sound, it becomes exhausting.”

In terms of your influences, which artists or albums capture the kind of feeling you wanted on this record?

“I’m never directly trying to take inspiration from one particular work, but I’m hugely influenced by live albums. I listen to a lot of live Queen, Tina Turner, AC/DC and Talking Heads records. There’s a looseness, rawness and additional dimension of humanity that I’m obsessed with. I wanted to capture some of those moments and include them within the recorded versions of these songs.”

Do you think live albums have lost some of that quality now because even many live shows are so carefully choreographed? You mentioned AC/DC and Queen. Those performances were raw and chaotic, but everything felt genuine and organic.

“I’m currently mixing my own live records. I’ve never released one, but I recorded a live album for every studio album I made. I’m leaving in all the bad notes and out-of-tune vocals because they’re part of the performance. They make the recording more exciting. Sometimes you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I love that. I probably listen to more live records than studio albums.”

Was that unpredictability what originally attracted you to rock music?

“It was more the grandiosity that drew me towards it. I love things that are larger than life and transport you beyond the everyday. I don’t want to make background music. None of my favourite artists ever made that kind of music. I love music where the songs and communal experience become the entire focus, and everything outside the venue walls disappears. For ninety minutes or two hours, you’re transported into another universe. In some ways, it provides something that churches or religion may once have offered people. I’m not saying what I do is religious, but rock and roll is very much my religion. I want it to provide both escape and community.”

Live music is clearly very important to you. When you’re writing, do you work with the live show in mind and think about how songs will translate onstage?

“I think exclusively about the live show. Whenever I reach a creative crossroads, I imagine I’m onstage and ask myself what I would want to happen next. If I’ve captured everybody’s attention, what would be exciting to do with it? That guides many of my creative decisions.”

The album covers a broad range of rock music. There are full-throttle songs such as “When the Love Is Gone,” alongside huge, arena-sized tracks like “More She Wants.” Do you prefer playing sweaty clubs or large arenas?

“I love both. I love anything that feels authentic, passionate and real, for better or worse. I hate when bands try to sound over-the-top and bombastic because they think they’re supposed to, and I hate when artists play it cool or make something introspective because they think that’s what’s expected. I genuinely love both formats. I love writing ballads, and I also love writing enormous riffs.

The challenge is presenting those ideas in a way that feels interesting and different. I have to stand on the shoulders of giants, create something new and contribute to the lineage of rock and roll without imitating the past. For me, that often means taking huge, macho guitar parts and combining them with deeply emotional, personal choruses that pull at the heartstrings before returning to the riffs. That creates a sense of dynamics that I think is sorely missing from rock music today.”

Des Rocs ‘To Hell and Black’ album artwork

Why do you think those dynamics are missing?

“People are incentivised to move towards the middle. They see how other bands achieve success, either sonically or through social media, and there’s a direct incentive to imitate it. That creates a watered-down version of whatever came before. Before I was born, there seemed to be a greater sense of competition between artists and contemporaries. They would hear something incredible and think, “That’s where the bar is. I have to go back into the studio and make something even more real, compelling and interesting, either in terms of songwriting or production.”

That sense of competition feels gone. I don’t feel challenged by many of my peers. Instead, I live in the past. I listen to Prince records and think, ‘That’s where the bar is. That’s the field I’m playing in. How am I supposed to compete with this?’”

You don’t seem like an artist who follows the expected path. Has refusing to follow industry conventions ever negatively affected your career?

“It’s strange because I make music intended for the masses. I want to play Wembley Stadium to an audience filled with police officers, doctors, firefighters, teachers and people from every walk of life. Yet somehow I find myself as the odd person out in 2026 because I haven’t narrowed myself into a niche.

Niches have become the most popular thing. There are very specific subcultures filled with bands that sound similar because both human brains and algorithms like putting everything into buckets, scenes and convenient tour packages. All the incentive is towards the middle and towards imitating what already works. I stand firmly against that and always have.

I’ve always been the odd one out on every bill, in every city and within every scene where I’ve played to nobody. Either the world will eventually come to me or I’ll run out of fuel and collapse in the street. My mission is to make music that is authentically mine, regardless of what’s happening around me.”

“I make music intended for the masses. I want to play Wembley Stadium to an audience filled with police officers, doctors, firefighters, teachers and people from every walk of life. Yet somehow I find myself as the odd person out in 2026 because I haven’t narrowed myself into a niche.”

You touched earlier on authenticity in live music. For people who weren’t there while the album was being recorded, how untouched and “warts and all” is the finished record?

“You would be horrified if you could hear some of the takes that are actually on the record and how out of tune certain things are. I struggled vocally on this album. The songs were difficult to sing and extremely high, and I seriously damaged my voice. I almost killed myself making this record. I damaged two discs in my spine and couldn’t walk for several weeks. I was in an unimaginable level of pain, and then I badly injured my voice. I gave the album everything I had, and that pain is in the record.

I could sing those songs much better if I recorded them now. I had a strong urge to redo them, but I was talked out of it. There’s something real in the fact that the vocals aren’t perfect. If you want perfect vocals, you have Suno. If you want something real, you’ve got me.”

Do you feel any pressure because of that? There is clearly pressure within the industry to trigger algorithms, tick boxes and fit into specific niches. How difficult is it to resist falling into line?

“I could work within those boxes creatively all day. For fun, I could make something exactly like that. I don’t feel pressure to do it, although refusing is clearly against my own career and financial interests. It would be easier to become one of four bands on a scene package where everybody sounds exactly the same.

The only pressure I feel is to spread the word about what I do. I believe I’m the last man standing who can deliver a generational rock show. The performance we give is unlike anything people have seen. It could be for 250 kids in a basement in Alabama on a Tuesday night, but they’ll walk out saying it was the greatest show they’ve ever seen because I gave them 110 per cent of myself.

“People tell me to keep going and never stop. That’s easy for them to say because they don’t know what it’s like to spend year after year on the road. The pressure I feel is to fulfil that promise to everybody who tells me to keep going. It all connects directly to the album’s message, title and journey: To Hell and Back.”

Whether it’s twenty-five people or twenty-five thousand, how motivating is it when somebody tells you to keep going and says it was the best show they’ve ever seen?

“It means a lot. It can provide a small bump of encouragement exactly when you need it. People say, ‘Just keep going,’ but they don’t necessarily know you have two hundred dollars left in your bank account, a six-hour drive after the show and another twenty-nine dates ahead of you, all while playing to almost nobody.

It’s easier said than done, but as we discussed at the beginning, it’s equal parts delusion and pressure on myself to become the person who is still standing onstage thirty years from now with a guitar, delivering a show that isn’t rooted in a scene but in songs.”

You’ve performed with The Rolling Stones and Muse. Why do you think modern rock has lost some of its danger? The Rolling Stones were front-page news in the 1960s and 1970s. The same was true of Alice Cooper, Kiss and Queen. Why doesn’t rock have that same sense of danger now, and do you think there are still genuine rock stars?

“I have many thoughts about that. Everything has to be examined within the time and place in which it was created. For decades, rock music was made in response to something else. The way Kiss dressed, or the way certain artists performed and wrote, was a response to their contemporaries. That other music wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was different or more mainstream.

Rock artists were risky and avant-garde. Then they aged, and some aged better than others. They reached different points in their careers and began saying different things through their music. The best artists are capable of evolving rather than relying on one shtick or gimmick.

Rock has lost that sense of responsiveness. People might say something political now, but often it’s done for clicks. The real incentive is to bait algorithms, so it doesn’t always come from an authentic place. The only available outlets are controlled by those algorithms.”

How difficult is it to respond authentically when artists are now worried about being cancelled, dropped or pushed further down by algorithms? Mick Jagger and Alice Cooper didn’t seem to care what people thought. How do you avoid becoming trapped by those concerns?

“You have to give no fucks and make whatever you want. The moment you begin analysing consequences that can’t possibly be foreseen, the art is doomed. If you do that before creating anything, you’ll never make something good. I think it’s impossible.

You may consider those things after the art has been made and think about the best way to release it, but the creation itself has to be fearless. Every great rock star before me was fearless. They didn’t give a fuck and risked everything. Some literally died young because they didn’t care.

That’s one part of rock and roll I don’t like: the death cult and the romanticisation of dying at twenty-seven. However, it still has to involve somebody being completely committed to the art. It’s a strange time to be a rock artist.”

What did you learn from supporting artists such as The Rolling Stones and Muse? Muse have an enormous, cinematic live show, while The Rolling Stones are still a chaotic rock-and-roll band. Are they useful benchmarks for where you want your career to go?

“I learned that I think I can genuinely do it. I could be one of the next artists to reach that level. I watched every show in full. I noted the things I liked and thought were working so I could steal them, and I also noticed the things I didn’t like so I could avoid them.

I watched those performances and thought, ‘I can do that.‘ I genuinely believe I could be the next one because I don’t think anybody in my generation is doing it. I feel pressure to carry the torch of great rock music forward, and I place a tremendous amount of pressure on myself.

I also learned what makes bands great: great songs and great shows. That’s really it. There can be infinite variations on those two things. A song can be about nothing and still be great because it means something to somebody, or it can be deeply personal. There are no rules. You need great songs and a great show, and both those bands have those qualities. That’s why they’ve remained onstage for decades.”

“You have to give no fucks and make whatever you want. The moment you begin analysing consequences that can’t possibly be foreseen, the art is doomed.”

Imagine we’re having this conversation when you’re eighty years old and relaxing in a rocking chair. What would you want to have achieved?

“I would focus less on tangible accomplishments. I would rather be able to say I tried things and failed than admit I never tried them at all.”

Finally, as we head through 2026 and into 2027, what does Des Rocs want to bring back to rock music?

“That is a very loaded question. I don’t want to bring anything back. I want to forge a new path in rock in my own image.”