"Rock is dead" is a pretty popular sentiment these days (OK, it has been since Pete Townshend proclaimed the death of the electric guitar a few decades ago).

But while Jack Black was likely being tongue-in-cheek when he wrote the song "Rock Is Dead" off Tenacious D's new album Rize of the Fenix, he may have still been somewhat sincere.

"When you think about rock at its origin," he recently told Rolling Stone, "and you think of The Beatles and millions of kids screaming as loud as they can and running as fast as they can toward The Beatles, there's no one who is that kind of lightning rod, who commands that kind of power and has that kind of creative magma."

So who was the last big rock band according to Black? "I contend that the last band to really have that kind of power, I'm gonna say, was Nirvana. Who since Nirvana has been as big as Nirvana, in that way?"

The actor/musician would give shout outs to some of today's bigger rock acts, including his counterpart, Jack White. "Whatever he does is worth checking out," Black said of White, "and his arch nemesis, The Black Keys, are also tremendous. The Foo Fighters. I loves me some Foos. But it does get thin after that."

Tenacious D will release their new album, Rize of the Fenix, on May 15.