I did know that. Problem is, "Alternative" is the mainstream now, essentially meaning what was mainstream in the '80s is now alternative. That basically means that, if you take the literal meaning, NWOBHM and classic thrash metal are alt metal.
Another problem is probably that "Alternative" is also being constantly used interchangebly with "Modern Rock."

I once read that "alternative" was used to describe rock bands like King Crimson, who mixed classical and jazzy elements into their music, as opposed to good ol' rock bands, who were influenced by the blues.

That was true once, since alternative meant Exactly What It Says On The Tin- rock music that different than what is popular. As to whatever "Regular Rock" is, I don't know.
As I said and will say again, if Alt Rock is the mainstream now, what does that make blues-oriented rock? Modern Alternative? Reg Rock? Modern Classic Rock?

That's exactly what I've meant in the last few words of my previous comment.

Really? Huh, I took it differently- in mine, I meant "Guns and Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Megadeth, and Iron Maiden, today, should be considered Alternative."

Hmmm...
Let me reword this.
A band in the style of Guns and Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Megadeth, or Iron Maiden- that is new- is now considered alternative. Rival Sons- a band that is full on '70s blues rock bravado- is now alternative? But a band called "Wristpayne" or "New Love on the Horizon" that's emo whino is modern rock.
This is getting confusing!

Sigh. If that is what you meant, then just ignore this post.

Alternative was a blanket term, meant to embody something other than mainstream music, for a time it encompassed everything from REM to Depeche Mode. This was in the 80s before alternative became mainstream, of course.

I believe in the 80s & 90s "alternative" stood for punk influenced underground rock music. These days it seems to just be a blanket term for terrible pop rock bands (eg. Nickelback) who's fans want the comfort of knowing that their shitty band's are somehow different from the rest of the mainstream feces out there.

Come to think of it post-grunge & nu metal aren't really legit genres, one could say all post-grunge & nu metal actually falls under the alternative rock & metal categories. I'm starting to believe the term "post-grunge" was just created by hipsters who want to differentiate the equally horrid "grunge" from the early 90s from the new stuff which they dont dig, and that the term "nu metal" was created by pissed-off old school metalheads who wanted a genre to lump the worst new bands into. And of coarse media marketing plays a big part in the grand scheme of it all.

Grunge ruined everything and for some reason it's made alternative the law, if you want to be a popular rock band.

What's pissed me off is the demonization of hair metal that happened. It's almost as if they were like Nazis and their horrible atrocities they inflicted upon us will NEVER, EVER have a sniff of happening again. It's been over 2 fucking decades of shitty alternative, grunge inspired shit with no hope of ol' good time hard rock getting any form of power back.

I didn't quite get what you're trying to state. Clarify a little bit. Are you saying that hair metal was good?

LOL.

Hair metal was always going to be a short-lived fad, whether grunge came to be or not. Or did you somehow think Unskinny Bop would become an all-time classic?

It's not being "demonized". It's insipid pop music using distorted guitars and the weird Spray Net fashion of the time as a vehicle. Kids just grew out of it.

Haha, well said dude. It reminds of a statement made by Kim Thayil on Metal Evolution: Ep 7, "What was considered ‘metal’ then was this kinda hair-farmer, spandex..uh..music for the future housewives of America. Those bands sounded like The Partridge Family with fuzzy guitars. That’s what they sounded like." That's absolute gold.

"What's pissed me off is the demonization of hair metal that happened. It's almost as if they were like Nazis and their horrible atrocities they inflicted upon us will NEVER, EVER have a sniff of happening again. It's been over 2 fucking decades of shitty alternative, grunge inspired shit with no hope of ol' good time hard rock getting any form of power back."

Hair or glam (whatever that shit is called) was the most pathetic form of rock and 'grunge' actually brought some real rock music back, because at the end of the 80s pretty much every band sounded the same and sucked.

Grunge bands are no less pathetic then glam band's, since they and their fans put more importance on what Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain are wearing, as opposed to the actual music, which most of the time is fifth rate punk inspired garbage.

Are you serious?

If there's one thing Grunge had going for it, it was the refreshingly down-to-earth visual aspect. There's absolutely no fucking way anyone associated with the metal scene can talk shit about grunge in that respect with a straight face as metal is filled to the brim with bands and fans who are obsessively image-conscious. Don't even get me started on glam metal and its "fashion". Any one of those faeries spent more time just on their hair in the morning than a squadron of grunge musicians would from getting up out of their bed to being ready and out the door. That's a fucking fact.

I won't really debate on the music as it's a matter of taste and I'm not much into grunge. But it seemed to me there was a lot more than rehashed punk going into this.

Hmm, maybe Nirvana's music was a bit of punk inspired garbage and straight Killing Joke, Boston rip-offs. But I can't hear much punk in Pearl Jam's early music. It was more of a classic rock affair. And I totally agree with what Riffs wrote above about the fashion and appearance. Really the Seattle lads didn't care much about clothes. They cared for functional, straight-forward musicianship. And if you take the heavier bands like Melvins, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains then they brought back the heaviness in heavy rock which was missing since 1978. They took metal/heavy rock to it's roots, the heavy blues inspired rock music what Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Pentagram (Doom band from US) were playing. That's what fundamental in true metal and they (Soundgarden, Melvins, AiC) rejuvenated it.

"Most pathetic form of rock"...were you in a coma during mallcore's heady days?

I'm not saying I'd thump someone in the name of hair metal. Apart from a handful of songs, none of it was particularly "great" or "classic" but for fuck sake it wasn't a quarter as cancerous as modern critics and alternative bands make it out to be...

I've some favourites from the glam/hair era such as The Crimson Idol (WASP), Slave to the Grind (Skid Row), Pride (White Lion). I think there's much originality and honest music in these albums than just bland and goofy cock rock.

Didn't that one band Jet have a few chart topping hits? I remember them being all over MTV when they were popular about a decade ago. I mean, they were a cheap AC/DC knock off but that's something for mainstream media, anyways. The Sword are another group who achieved popularity, although it can be disputed they're more Doom Metal than just pure Rock. Oh, and The Vines, too.

I wouldn't call Jet AC/DC knock off. As much as I've heard them a long time ago they seem more of The White Stripes+Oasis thing. If I've to label one band as AC/DC knock off it has to be Airbourne.

In our desperate state for popular blues-oriented style hard rock groups, why should you care if Jet does or doesn't sound like AC/DC? I'll take what I can get.
Classic rock/metal aficionados, at this stage, are in no position to bargain.
PS- I can't see Hair Metal making a true comeback anyway. Weebos and tweens would begin calling it 'anime metal' and then where the hell would we be?

Hahaha. How the hell were Jet an AC/DC knock off? Jet if anything were a Brit Invasion knock off, in the same way groups like Oasis were. Airbourne would be a much better example of an AC/DC knock off.

I have to agree with this statement, at least in part. There was some pretty good music during the 80s glam period that was unjustly panned because of the image associated with it. Bands like Kixx, Badlands and Dillinger actually had a number of really good bluesy influences going for them that were praised to high hell between 1989 and 1991, and then all of the sudden in 1993 anybody who admitted to liking these bands were treated like fucking lepers.

This wasn't just limited to actual hair bands either, as just about anything remotely 80s (including NWOBHM or thrash metal for that matter) was mocked all but universally. It literally got so bad that when I brought in a copy of Iron Maiden's "Fear Of The Dark" to my guitar class in high school for our Friday "bring your own music in" activity literally every trendy, Kurt Cobain worshipping sycophant in the class was ranting about how faggoty and glam they thought it sounded.

And this was just an unpleasant memory from 9th grade. Don't even get me started on how bad it got when Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock started hitting the airwaves.

Luckily, things have begun to change, and it's the '70s and '80s stuff that's now being lauded in guitar classes where I live.
Not really glam, though. Glam is avoided.
For the same reason I mentioned earlier. "Anime metal."

Grunge is to Sludge what Deathcore is to Death Metal, the watered-down accessible version. Nirvana is the insight to this: first album, more Melvin-ish than Pixies, even had a fuckin Melvins member on it......not that popular, not that well known at least in terms of Nirvana. Nevermind comes along, total Pixie Pop love......popular. as. shit. for it had both the soft stuff and the teeth-Pop to a T, borderline stuff, no boundries pushed. hate it, love it, it's there.

i know there's more to it but this is it put simply, but shit like that and other odd little similarities-the choice of poison (heroin), the bad hygiene, the plaid etc. it all adds up. & if someone already said this....oh well, pbbt

and this isn't me shitting on the stuff either, it just is what it is, i'm a fuckin 90s kid through and through.....I'M A NEGATIVE CREEP! I'M A NEGATIVE CREEP!

What the fuck are you talking about man? The term 'Sludge' came to public attention due to the rise of NOLA scene around '95-'96. And as a matter of fact the 'sludge' sound was inspired by Seattle sound. So evidently 'Sludge' came after 'Grunge'.

I don't think he was talking about which one came first, I think he was getting at the nature of the relationship that the 2 parallel stylistic pairs share with one another, and to a point it makes sense. Grunge is far more accessible and less reliant on the nasty sound of the earlier punk and doom bands that inspired it, while Sludge is pretty well removed from the pop punk and hard rock influences that typified the more popular grunge bands.

Also, Crowbar goes back to the late 80s, which is also about how far back the actual Grunge sound goes, and both were underground, so claiming that one came before the other isn't quite as cut and dry and you are making it out to be. Furthermore, NOLA came out after Down had been putting out demos for several years, and I don't think Timeghoul was getting at the prominence of the scenes but the content of the music.

Melvins came way before Crowbar as far as I know. Crowbar was practically formed in 1990. Gluey Porch Treatments (1987) by Melvins is arguably the first sludge metal record if not Black Flag's My War (1984), that's debatable. Soundgarden and Alice in Chains also have quite a few straight up sludge metal songs, for instance "Slaves and Bulldozers" and "Junkhead". So it's quite obvious that 'Sludge' spawned within the 'Grunge' scene.

And by NOLA I meant the New Orleans scene, not the Down album.

Well i was referring more to the fans, who seem to see Grunge more as a fashion statement than a music genre and who want to ''rebel'', sort of like mallcore kids. That's why i said Nirvana was proto-mallcore, because they attracted those sort of mall-dwelling kiddie fans long before Korn and Slipknot did.

I like some Nirvana, especially In Utero. Simple but well-written songs. As soon as I saw this thread I had a hunch there'd be a barrage of rejectful responses. That's okay and something I can deal with. But then there's always some asshole who gets started on the "popular, thus bad" thing. Seriously that's just plain ignorant.

Actually, Artificial, I haven't seen any opinions in the vein of "grunge is popular (it isn't, by the way, or not nowadays, at least), and therefore sucks ass" so far in this thread. Every thing said against the style has been so far fairly reasonable.

Oh really? Mall-this, mall-that.

Even that is justifiable, in the sense that "mallcore" isn't disliked merely because it's mallcore, but because it has quite a few characteristics that are universally disliked by metalheads (myself included). People don't say "mallcore is shit because it's mallcore", they say it because it's watered down, simplified garbage aimed at angsty tweens.

DESCLAIMER: I don't really agree that grunge in itself is mallcore, though neither consider it a stretch to say that some of the earlier grunge bands might have inspired the rise of such crap.

I like a little Hair Metal myself (Whitesnake, Cinderella, Motley Crue, etc...), but I wouldn't knock Grunge down like that.
Grunge...is difficult to describe. Sure, you might be right about Nirvana (Though I actually like Bleach, which I say is their only album anyone should listen to, but what do I know...), but we actually got some great bands out of that scene. Soundgarden flat out rocked, Alice In Chains was almost Doom and just great, Pearl Jam gave us their first album, and we got Melvins' weirdness. I'd say the upcoming of Grunge would be great if it weren't for so many terrible bands coming out of it (WHICH you could say the same about Hair Metal )

I get your point X. The term mallcore how I see it is a horribly over-inflated negative buzzword, that implies popularity.

^Respect to that. Now, I stand by what I've said before. I reiterate that 'grunge' is just a catchphrase sensationalized by media and one particular record label known as 'Sub-Pop'. Neither the bands associated with the label sounded alike nor they wanted to be associated with the label apart from Nirvana, Pearl Jam and later era Soundgarden to a lesser extent. To me Mudhoney and Nirvana were like punk rock bands. Skin Yard and Screaming Trees were more psychedelic oriented though some Skin Yard songs are definitely metal. Pearl Jam were more classic rock oriented. Melvins were/are incredibly weird, sort of a punk meets metal meets art rock kind of thing. And they gave birth to other few terms known as sludge, drone etc. Alice in Chains were borderline doom metal. You could hear the Sabbath influence all over. Some of the songs on Facelift touched speed metal here and there, most of them were simply heavy metal/hard rock. Dirt and Tripod were more sludgy and doomy. And post-Layne era Alice sounds pretty much straightforward doom/stoner metal to me.

When some metal and older rock bands started 'going grunge' in the late '90s- looking at their videos now, it's ridiculous. It was like stereotypical emo soft-Nirvana grunge. Then I listen to Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick."
Funny what the record industry can do with a little promotion.

Well like i said earlier, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Melvins etc are all awesome and very much metal, but NOT grunge. To me, if i had to define grunge as a musical genre (i don't really consider it an actual genre anyway) it would be pretty much just straight up alternative rock with a tiny bit more of an emphasis on punk rock & hard rock, but essentially the exact same thing. Alice in Chains are not grunge because they have absolutely no punk influence whatsoever and are just straight up Heavy metal/rock n roll

Nirvana=Grunge
Pearl Jam=Grunge
Foo Fighters=Grunge
Alice in Chains=Heavy metal
Soundgarden=Heavy metal/Stoner rock
Melvins=Doom metal/Hardcore/Stoner rock

Alice In Chains doesn't sound heavy metal to me. Like, at all.

Well they can also be put into the alternative metal category (not to be confused with nu metal as it often is) since their sound could be described as a sort of fusion between alternative rock and heavy metal, but Alice in Chains are much heavier then other alternative metal bands like Tool and Faith No More.

Hey Riffs, just outta curiosity, how much have you heard of AIC's material?