^that sentiment's been expressed about 5 times prior to this post, but it apparently bears repeating.

LOL "brainwashing sheep" in a media climate where pop music has never been more fractured than now. If MTV had its way the EDM explosion would have happened in 1997 instead of ska and swing. Newsflash bro - FM radio barely matters now. One of the biggest reasons it has changed is that the business model of ad buys has fallen tremendously because people aren't listening in the same numbers. People have MP3 players and satellite radio now, so the local DJ doesn't make financial sense. He's replaced by virtual jukeboxes on shuffle because they cost next to nothing, or by nationally syndicated programming that doesn't sound "cheap".



Today someone can listen to Abraxas on Spotify through their cell phone. Who the hell cares?



A modern shift, I'm sure! It kills me to hear people say shit like this, as if Roadrunner was some sort of 800-lb gorilla that waltzed into Clearchannel and demanded they start putting Nickelback into heavy push, otherwise they were gonna pull their artists and leave them without heavy hitters like Deicide, Fear Factory, and Trona. "Oh no, what will we do without Junkie XL?" Yeah labels investing money into acts is a big part of why certain bands make it and certain ones never come close. Fucking FM radio was taking payola in the 50s. Go dig up Alan Freed and ask him about it some time.

There doesn't have to be any subtext or metaphor. From your words it follows from some simple logic: If grunge's popularity is based on marketing and promotion and "people being programmed to think they're great" (your words), then it is implied that it wasn't based on talent. Therefore, they were popular because of advertising and not their instrumental and songwriting skills. Are you with us so far?

Now, I think where the confusion comes from is you are taking "they didn't deserve to be popular" to have some kind of judgemental quality, when it did not. It simply meant that they were not popular because of musical talent, which is something to be admired in musicians, but because of cunning business practices, which are not.

I don't see how any of this is possibly disputable, but I'm sure you'll come up with something.

This is tedious.

Make of it what you want. I am tired of discussing this.

It is indeed plainly written. It just seems like you've got trouble remembering what you wrote.

Oh dude! I'm not disagreeing with you on the homogenisation of the radio, although i'd attribute it more not to the dumbing-down/brainwashing of society, but rather the advent of the internet, personal music players, and the like. There's more variety in music today than there ever was in the 70s (for example), only the radio has become a bit of a dying medium, only used in very specific situations etc (note that I'm talking about traditional radio, not internet radio). It's only natural that they need to rely much more on pinpoint marketing techniques, because only a small cross-section of society listens to radio now - the workplace example from my previous post being a good one.

As someone else said though, there are undoubtedly DJs on internet radio stations who'll play Santana albums in full on a whim - it's just that another medium is now being used. One that the media empire-types don't have control of. Because there'll always be demand for this stuff, especially with access to information being at the level it is now. I think the rise of things like deathcore (you know, the more questionable metal genres that involve sleeve tattoos and swept fringes) in their own little subculture-bubbles are a good example: something left-of-centre is still really popular (edit: can still BECOME really popular), and exists almost completely out of the mainstream - Facebook pages and internet radio prop them up.



Again, I'm not disagreeing with you here! Although I have to admit I don't think the whole mental programming thing runs quite as deep as a few of you guys seem to - the microbrewing culture in countries like the US and Australia being a PRIME example. But yes, I can agree that there must be something going on that keeps people listening to the Black Eyed Peas. As for Gangnam Style (I know it's just an example), that's something that went viral though, and I don't think we should compare it to the regular stuff you see in the charts (although it still makes my blood boil even thinking about it).

But one other thing: most people I know don't listen to the radio, or the black eyed peas-type shit outside of a nightclub situation. Maybe it's because the majority of my friends are university students and a bit more inclined to realise that mainstream music is largely crap, I dunno. I still have to stress that I think radio (and any public situation involving music) caters to the lowest common denominator, not the mean... if that makes sense, haha.

"I have had enough of you, lesser mortals! I waste my intellect bringing myself down to your level!"

I thoroughly agree. Just like it happened with nu metal during the late 90's and early 00's, the term "grunge" is just a label invented by the media to refer to a musical movement that was more tied up by image than musical characteristics. The aforementioned Alice in Chains, for instance, is clearly a metal band, and the only things it has in common with the other musical outfits from the same era and location are its gloomy aesthetics.

Feels like this thread has proven to be a good alternative version of the Popular Music thread, no puns intended.

I've taken a fair amount of pleasure in ripping on Kurt Cobain in a number of my reviews here, but I actually thought "Bleach" had a fair number of decent songs. I don't really see much of a contradiction in hating Kurt as a musician and liking that album since by his own admission what he wrote on there was completely different than his preferred style. When I listen to "Nevermind" I hear music that is purposefully boring and lazy, not to mention a little too obvious in its derivative tendencies (particularly considering the 2 biggest singles off of said album "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Come As You Are"). By the same token, "In Utero" was the same story with a little less polish and a little more noise, ergo it sounded like a bad pop album that was trying to be aggressive, but tended to come off as whiny. One could maybe attribute much of what I didn't like about Nirvana to the music media, which marketed the whole Alternative style as some replacement for 80s metal music, something which I don't think was on the agenda for the rest of the bands lumped into the scene like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, who largely began by touring with a lot of bands that were considered part of the 80s. I still listen to Alice In Chains fairly regularly and I'm actually thinking of breaking out some of my Soundgarden CDs again, though I didn't care too much for "Superunkown" or their really lame last album from that era "Down On The Upside".

Most of the other stuff that burned up the radiowaves circa 1991-1994 wasn't really terribly compelling whether it was part of the official Grunge scene, or loosely associated with it via the post-Guns N Roses sound. The first half of "Ten" was really Pearl Jam's only shining spot, followed by a career of "Meh" or "What's The Fuck!?". I do remember liking the first Candlebox album, but they didn't really strike me as a Grunge band when contrasting the guitar sound and atmosphere with the Seattle sound. Some of the grunge-infused material by The Melvins was decent, but the pre-grunge work of pioneer bands like Mudhoney and Sonic Youth was all but pain-inducing.

Alice In Chains and Soundgarden are among my favorite bands and I have a lot of love for Temple Of The Dog, Mad Season, and Nirvana. So yeah, I love me some grunge but need to get more into it overall.

Alice in Chains and Jerry Cantrell are my two of my most cherished bands of all time. I think they do a great blend between metal and rock.

First off, side-note: I'm amazed how similarly refined everyones grunge taste is here. AiC and Soundgarden are placed over and above almost everything else. It's kind of like how metalheads all tend to love QOTSA, although they weren't grunge and their sound was never replicated by a million other half baked in-the-moment bands. The comon denominator is that all three bands are composed of good muicians who love rock and roll, and play a popular, but not entirely mainstreamed kind of music. They are easygoing but not mindnumbingly watered down, and have unusual musical ideas but also aren't overbearing.

But in another light, there were also a lot of grunge bands that really did suck a lot of massive zebra dong. The grunge sound was a good idea with a bright future, but was commercialized and ripped off time and time again. I don't think that's Kurt Cobains fault, it is inevitable with every genre of music. It's a lot like the same way there will always be great metal bands, but we will still have to put up with our kind of not-as-individual freinds and girlfriends thinking Pantera and Disturbed and the hardcore nu-metal bands are the heaviest and greatest shit. It's because of the way Master of Puppets changed the mainstream appreciation for metal forever, but only when it's watered down and lame. Respectively, there will always be good post-rock bands with talanted musicans who can write good songs that are inspired by or akin to grunge music, without it being a bunc of pop tunes that taste like stale Alpo dog food with Worcestershire sauce mixed in.

Mother's Milk was my favorite until I heard One Hot Minute. Say what you will about Dave Navarro, but him+RHCP was an awesome combination. As far as grunge goes, I started out listening to Nirvana (hairspray queen is still probably my favorite track by them) and then cought on to AiC pretty quickly. If I ever recieved a lap dance at at a strip club, it would be to Man in the Box. That song's sexy as hell.

Ahhh the 1990's, the true grunge era. Alice in Chains was my favorite. I'm proud that i was alive

sick of hearing Green Day bullshit on radio for the last 20 years.

need to hear the Devils Blood and Firebird etc. get popular so they can play to sold out arenas.

Grunge is something I've never had an interest in and can't understand the dedication some have towards it. it's possible I just haven't heard the right stuff but kind of doubt it

By Green Day bullshit, I assume you mean pop punk and modern rock. The same 'use double bass pedals despite not being death metal, grindcore, thrash', over whiny "hardcore-to-softer lyrics-to-whiny chorus-to-hardcore breakdown-repeat-until-whiny guitar section-with-weak-solo-then-whiny chorus-and-end-with-hardcore-breakdown-repeat-for-every-song" that has been going on since nu metal?

You should give Alice in Chains and Soundgarden a shot. Most metalheads are into them, and with good reason.

The SHM and Rbrnflms; what the fuck are you guys talking about?

I assumed the other dude was raging against modern rock and pop punk. What I was talking about was how most modern rock bands seem to structure their songs.

Yeah, but I fail to see how any of that has anything to do with the topic at hand

I don't either, but it can't be denied that most of it is alt rock. Grunge kicked open the doors to the alt rock explosion.

Ask the other dude for a better reason, though. I guess he was saying that it would be better to hear extreme metal topping the modern rock charts than pop punk.
I'm getting the feeling that probably should've gone in the Popular music thread.

SMH, Stop going thread-crazy.

Grunge is not a genre, it's just a stupid LAME marketing term from the early 90s that a few genuinely good metal bands (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden) got caught up in. All grunge bands are just either Alternative rock/metal. Nirvana are sort of to blame for mallcore, although they were just one of many "proto-mallcore" bands from the early 90s (Pantera, Faith No More etc)

Did you just drop Nirvana, Faith No More and Pantera into the same subcategory?

That seems like a weird stretch to me.

Indeed. And proto-mallcore Talk about historic revisionism!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_metal All three bands are mentioned as setting the blueprint for nu metal/mallcore. Pantera pioneered the more angry hardcore oriented sector (Slipknot), Faith No More pioneered the hip hop/funk sector (Limp Bizkit) and Nirvana pioneered the whiny alternative sector (Linkin Park, Korn, Papa Roach). Hell Fred Durst even has a tattoo of Cobain!

Korn also got the idea for using 7 string guitars from Steve Vai by their own admission. Steve Vai; big nu metal influence. Maybe bigger than Nirvana.

While I would agree with you that Alice In Chains and Soundgarden don't really fit in with the rest of the so-called Grunge scene and I personally loathe most of Nirvana's music, I think calling Nirvana proto-mallcore is a pretty massive stretch. While Nirvana's guitar lines were idiotically simple and grating, the riffing style of most mallcore bands is generally influenced more by the groove sound, particularly that of Pantera, only further simplified. Some of the clean guitar lines heard on Machine Head's "Burn My Eyes" have some elements of Cobain's quirky chorus-heavy clean guitar sound on songs like "Come As You Are", but this is something that is shared with a number of bands that are nowhere within the realm of mallcore or groove metal.

Just because something sucks doesn't necessarily mean its stylistically in line with something else that sucks. Just saying.

I suppose you're talking about this?

Rock bands of the 1980s and 1990s including Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, Tool, Nirvana, Primus, Rage Against the Machine, Helmet and Nine Inch Nails have been identified as laying groundwork for the development of nu metal, such as combining aggressive riffs with pop structures and drawing influence from a variety of genres within and outside of heavy metal.[11][12][13][14][15][16] Metal bands of the same era such as Pantera, Sepultura and Anthrax have also been cited as influential to nu metal.

Being an influence for some band or genre (good or bad) doesn't lump you into some weird category. Is the fact that Judas Priest influenced The Smashing Pumkins make them proto-alt-rock? Are Pink Floyd a proto-doom-depressive-gothic-death band because some obscure shitty bands draw influences and use them as a template?

According to this wikipedia, we can all lump not only Pantera, Nirvana and Faith No More but also Anthrax, Tool and NIN as proto-mallcore if you use that thought process. That doesn't make any sense to me.

I never considered Grunge a genre in its own right, seeing as the 'big 4' have such different styles. They're just rock bands from Seattle who were active in the early 90s. That said, I love Pearl Jam, not so much for Ten but the stuff they did from Vitalogy onwards. I chalk this community's general hatred towards the band up to 'mallcore paranoia'. They're really just classic rock revivalists who had some angsty lyrics in a few of their hit singles. I'm also very fond of Soundgarden who, by the way, released their newest album on Monday. Badmotorfinger is a classic and the next two albums, although inconsistent have a bunch of songs I love. I don't care much for Alice in Chains. They've written a few great songs over the years, but much of their album material might as well not exist as far as I'm concerned. The same holds true for Nirvana. I have no real desire to seek out any other "grunge" bands anytime soon. And post-grunge is a huge pile of horseshit as far as I'm concerned.

I consider none of these bands to be metal.

Basically the wikipedia article says that every band defined by the mainstream as hard rock or metal post glam influenced nu-metal. Wow, there's a revelation.

Bolt Thrower DID NOT influence Nu Metal

I consider grunge as more of a scene than a subgenre. None of those bands sounded alike though a few common traits were present between some bands. Melvins, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains are definitely metal bands. And none of them cared for the 'grunge' label at all. Although Soundgarden alike some other Seattle bands tried to distance themselves from heavy metal as they despised glam/hair metal (what was basically the definitive heavy metal in the bland eyes of mainstream at that time. Ronnie James Dio hated hair metal too). But Alice in Chains didn't act in the same way as they've had a hair metal past. They opened for Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax in the Clash of the Titans and toured with plenty metal bands. Some AiC materials sound like borderline doom metal to me, they produced a proto-sludge metal sound too specially the self titled and a few songs from Facelift and Dirt as well. Even the comeback record is fucking heavy. Moreover, I've noticed a lot of modern doom and stoner metal bands cite Alice in Chains as an influence. Hell even Eric Wagner (Trouble) loves AiC, that explains a lot. I don't care much for Nirvana, Cobain was a shitty guitar player and I don't understand his songwriting. Even though something about that guy forced me to respect him. Other than that I love Mother Love Bone, Skin Yard, Green River, Mudhoney and Tad. I like early Pearl Jam records to be honest. Didn't care about their later mediocre alternative rock records.

A1- I don't think grunge was responsible for mallcore/nu metal/metalcore etc. Maybe Nirvana had a proto-mallcore sound but that has nothing to do with it at all. Thrash metal and Groove metal alongwith certain Gothenburg Melodic death metal bands are responsible for metalcore and nu metal. And some funk bands like Primus, Faith No More and Jane's Addiction.

A2- I don't know anything about Nu Grunge. I've watched Metal Evolution and if you're talking about the second half then Sam Dunn focuses on Post-grunge bands e.g. super commerical Creed, Nickelback etc. I haven't noticed him saying about anything called 'Nu-grunge'.

I can't agree with you on that, actually many of the so called "Alternative metal" bands from the early 90s (Helmet, Tool, etc.) are mainly to blame for the horrible wave of nu metal that came in the mid 90s.

Yes, the above mentioned bands are very much responsible for nu metal. As well as bands like Suicidal Tendencies, Biohazard, Pantera, D.R.I, Sepultura (since 'Roots'), Carcass and later Cryptopsy (influence on deathcore) alongwith At the Gates (some songs), In Flames and other melo death bands had significant impact on shaping the early mallcore (metalcore/nu metal/deathcore combined) sound.

I don't like the idea that some bands are "to blame" for nu metal/metalcore. It's not their fault that they influenced some guys that made really shitty music.

Absolutely. 100% agreed. I just stated my previous comment as it was the context of this whole discussion that "whom to blame for current mallcore music?" Otherwise, I completely agree with you. I don't like this idea at all. It's not the fault of the predecessor bands if the modern mallcore bands make radio-friendly watered down heavy pop music. They don't play it right, their music is dishonest, they're just trying to make money and fuck chicks. Then why would the genuine, good and original bands have to take responsibilty for that?

1- While it wasn't responsible, it didn't stop its rise. Whether grunge's stripped down sensibilities had any long term effects on alt metal can be debated all day. Perhaps it would have happened regardless. Perhaps not. Being that 1991-1994 is kind of the hinge point, the gateway between pre-'90s over the top riff heavy, solo heavy hard rock, and post-'90s emotional, breakdown heavy alt rock, I still believe that grunge had to have left some mark.

2- Nu Grunge is entirely theoretical. I was wondering how metal heads and rock purists would react to a genre called 'nu grunge', but actually abandoned the punk and sludge elements for classic blues metal and the "Old Rock" styles, especially since bluesy rock seems to be making something of a comeback. I always figured we'd act tense at first (It has "Grunge" in its name, oh crap!) then wind up enjoying most of them. Although, that's ultimately what happened with old grunge...

Does anyone know what the actual definition of 'alternative' used to be? Alternative used to stand for anti-mainstream in the early-mid 80's. Those media assholes marketed the word so superfluously and blatantly for their benefit that it eventually got a bad name by the late 90's as some seriously good bands got lumped together with awful lot of crappy bands.