I'm a fan of the look and the sound but know little about the genre. SiriusXM's Hair Metal channel would have us believe there are three hair metal bands with five songs, so they are zero help.
How did I take so long to like this comment? I KNOW!! It's a riot.....it's not like hair metal and Grunge were all that different.......long hair and guitars...not exactly the revolution Grunge folk liked to pretend it was. It's just that Grunge folk took all the fun out of it. Wow.....revolutionary....make Rock n' Roll. a plodding, mid-tempo, pedantic, BORE! And to think they had the NERVE to equate it with Punk Rock....I was already into my Punk Rock years when Grunge hit the scene.... ....I was most DEFINITLY sure that Grunge and Punk had less in common than hair and Punk did. Grunge sounded like some bad early 70's, Bad Company, Free, "Name generic, colorless rock band here" type of sound. We used to call it: : "I don't mind eatin' BREAAAAAAAAAAD!" music.
Come on! Grunge didn’t ‘take the fun’ out of anything … no one said ‘buy this and stop buying that’. The reality was (a) the grunge songs were great, at least from the Big 4 and (b) there obviously was an audience that was ready for a change, wanted something more authentic and real, and was bored of the good time LA fantasy hair projected. I like both - the tier one acts from both sub-genres absolutely stand the test of time. And yes Temple of the Dog / “Hunger Strike” is one of those, and it’s “I don’t mind stealing bread from the mouth of decadents” … (maybe that does sum it up!) Separately, genuinely hard to see how you think punk has more in common with hair than grunge, but I’m sure you’ll enlighten …!!!
its not just that as fun bands were a usual thing in rock up until grunge. the stones, aerosmith, etc were out having fun and partying. rob zombie put it best. he said grunge made being a rockstar no longer fun and glamourous . rap music stole that appeal by the late 90's and rock never got it back
But I don’t think grunge can take the credit - lots of rock music isn’t “fun”. Sabbath wasn’t “fun”. Punk wasn’t “fun” (well, the Ramones were), hardcore wasn’t “fun”, like Black Flag, alt rock wasn’t “fun”, be it Husker Du or Jane’s Addiction. Hell, even GnR wasn’t “fun” … so rock always had space for less fun music. Of course, grunge absolutely had a right to exist and create its art, and I don’t think it has any responsibility or obligation for “fun” being present in wider rock music or not, surely?
It's taken me a long time to really get into the bands considered grunge, but now that I have--many good albums I threw by the wayside at the time. Badmotorfinger is, like, one of best albums ever. The one band I've not full embraced is Pearl Jam. I can listen to Ten, but damn I wish someone else was singing those songs. I do not care for Eddie Vedder.
I totally agree. Grunge destroyed rock and metal and opened the gates for people with no talent to pretend to make rock music. I found the grunge bands, pretentious, and self righteous. They were always trying, to prove how, pure their motives were in making music. In the end it was just an act, all artists want to sell records and make money. How ironic, they claimed to be the so-called "saviors" of rock music when actually they are the reason why we have all these whiny emo, screamo, & metalcore bands today.
Grunge can hardly have “destroyed” rock and metal, when It was a form of rock and metal (the latter in the case of bands like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains). Clearly, you have some deep issues with grunge, that no thread reply will untwist. To me, great guitar based rock is just that, and I’m pretty happy both hair and grunge exist - I get to enjoy both Mudhoney and Motley Crue!
Grunge isn't for me but plenty of people think it's great, which surely validates it, despite my negative opinion.
Lots and lots of musical merit. There's no taking away the virtuosity of players like Lynch, Lee, and DiMartini. Sure there was some dross, but oh man were there some great songs. Live shows were events. I'd rather see those guys in small clubs now than pretty much any other artist in an arena.
fun, a party vibe. all the other bands you mentioned ran concurrent with the aerosmith's, the who's, the l.a. rock scene, etc. literally after 1996 there are no rock bands i can think of other than maybe buckcherry that got popular after the year 1996 that had that rockstar vibe
Although I wouldn’t have The Who quite down as a fun / party vibe act, I get your point around the reduced plurality of styles available after the grunge broke - clearly (i) the labels prioritized what was selling and (ii) a number of 80s acts changed tack to a gloomier / angsty aesthetic to trend chase, (iii) new rock bands pivoted in this direction to meet the label’s demand and have a chance of being signed. None of those three drivers are the “fault” of grunge acts themselves, of course - just market forces. That said, in the first half the 90s, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard etc were still releasing music in their typical style, and by 1996 - your cut off date - I’d argue that grunge itself had expired. Cobain was dead, and all the seminal grunge albums had been released - this was late era grunge, with only less commercially successful albums being released (like Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside or Stone Tenple Pilots Tiny Music). My recollection of post 96 was grunge was already fading as a commercial force and we were into era of nu metal / Marilyn Manson / Kid Rock / Rob Zombie / Green Day and The Offspring. None of which I cared for …
MTV made Grunge popular by making Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains etc their new puppets and showing them every six minutes. Luckily MTV fell victim to it's own greed and is now about as important to music as hemorrhoids.
Whatever you call it, it's not really "Heavy Metal" because typically metal has a darkness to it: played in minor keys and the lyrics are either sinister or are about dark subjects. I wouldn't put Slayer and Mr. Big in the same category. Lets call it pop-metal.
Labels are malleable, I reckon. I wouldn't call Slayer heavy metal. I'd go with thrash, which is heavy metal on steroids but if others prefer the former, then I'm happy enough with that.
Warrant so much more than the hit single Cherry Pie. Love the song above. Jani Lane was a solid song writer for that era. GLAMS LAST GASP--Warrant's 1990 "CHERRY PIE" Album POLL:
