Hard-rocking band finds fast fame ‘ very exciting’

“Sprinkled with fairy dust” is how a key member of Greta Van Fleet’s team likes to talk about the fortunes of the young group.

The accelerating success of the hard-rocking quartet from Frankenmuth, Michigan — whose first full-length album, “Anthem of the Peaceful Army,” was released in October — makes such a description seem more reasonable than excessive.

The band — which formed in 2012 and took its name from a Frankenmuth town matron, Gretna Van Fleet — has been on a roll since its first single, “Highway Tune,” was released in early 2017.

Both it and the follow-up “Safari Song” (2017) hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. The group’s EP “Black Smoke Rising” (2017) hit No. 10 on the Hard Rock chart, and the subsequent EP, “From the Fires” (2017), topped the same list. Rockradio programmers and fans worldwide hailed the arrival of a savior-caliber act for a genre whose mainstream stature has been dwindling.

That base gave “Anthem of the Peaceful Army” a No. 3 debut on the Billboard 200, beating out heavy-rock competition from the veteran act Disturbed, and a No. 1 spot on the Rock Albums chart.

“It’s very exciting,” singer Josh Kiszka said by phone recently. "That’s all we’ve wanted to do for the past five, six years is put out a full-length album — and we’re finally able to do it.”

Greta Van Fleet has been praised by the elder rockers it emulates, including Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, to whom Kiszka often is compared. And Elton John tapped the band to perform at his annual Academy

Awards benefit, joining the group onstage for renditions of its “You’re the One” and his “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” (1973).

Guitarist Jake Kiszka — who founded the group six years ago with twin brother Josh on vocals and younger sibling Sam on bass and keyboards and, later, with friend Danny Wagner on drums — called the attention “overwhelming but exciting.”

The hectic pace of things, he added, has helped keep the group from getting carried away with its success.

“There are certain moments where you’re kind of forced to stand back and look at things — like when we played with Elton John — and kind of put some stuff in perspective,” the 22-year-old guitarist said. “But, mostly, things are rolling along so fast that it’s very difficult to look at it from an outside perspective. We just don’t have too much time to think about it right now.”

Josh Kiszka calls it "being in the eye of the storm."

"It’s very calm in the center, but around us it’s this swirling mass of chaos," he said. "It is a rocket ride. I don’t think any of us ever expected to launch into these realms."

The Kiszkas were prepared for a life in music by osmosis. Their father was a musician, and Josh recalled that "our parents had a lot of vinyl lying around." Familyand-friends ski trips were filled with jam sessions that influenced the brothers.

“It was really aweinspiring to see all these people from all over the place come together, and what brought them together was music," Jake said. "That was mind-blowing.”

Jake took to music first, drawing in his brothers and, eventually, Wagner. Greta Van Fleet’s sound references some of the four musicians’ favorites while growing up, and comparisons have been made to Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.

The guitarist, however, contends that the influence occurred organically.

“We liked to see how the English bands have reinterpreted the blues, and we wanted to interpret it again,” Jake explained. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if an American band came right back and reinterpreted the reinterpretation that the English did?’ I thought there was something there that needed to be created.”

Josh Kiszka, who bears the brunt of the comparisons because of his vocal similarities to Plant, said that “we’ve always been honored with the affiliation and humbled by their references.”

Sam Kiszka acknowledged that being grouped with such company is a bit intimidating.

“It’s kind of unreal,” the bassist said, “because the people we’re compared to, they’re pretty amazing. ... It tells me we’re going in the right direction.”

"Anthem of the Peaceful Army" shows the band’s growth since its first EP. It’s a mix of older tracks that found a home (such as “You’re the One") and others written for the album.

“A lot of the content evolved over the period of writing and recording it,” Josh said.

“I think in the last year and a half, we’ve traveled a lot more and seen a lot more places, met a lot more people. That’s contributing to the evolution of wherever we’re at now.”