When San Diego's Stone Temple Pilots showed up a few years late to the Seattle flannel-shirt party (arriving from a few hundred miles to the south), critics sharpened their claws and sounded the alarm: the groundbreaking grunge movement had crossed over. True, the grinding guitars and gravely man-howl of frontman Scott Weiland didn't break an inch of ground, but the clutch of singles here -- commercial anthems like "Plush," "Creep," "Sex Type Thing" and "Wicked Garden" -- grabbed the MTV audience by the throat and propelled the debut to triple platinum.
Radio-friendly debut from Alt-Post-Grunge-Metal arena band. On the strength of the hit single "Kryptonite," the record spent a good part of 2001 on the Billboard Charts.
On the strength of the hard-hitting, commercial rock songs "Everything Zen" and "Glycerine," Bush managed to catch the last wave of the Grunge phenomenon. A huge hit, this album drew out the venom in critics (citing them as Nirvana copy-ists), while fans grew more adoring.
In the three years separating Live's debut Mental Jewelry and 1994's Throwing Copper, quirky college rock gave way to Seattle's macho grunge revolution. Ed Kowalczyk & Co. addressed this radical shift in taste by beefing up their sound with louder guitars (but not too loud) and moodier (if utterly cryptic) lyrics. The result was one of the biggest-selling albums of the entire decade. Leading the way was monster hit "I Alone" (the video for which MTV played about 6,000 times a day). But "Lightning Crashes" and "All Over You" were also key in establishing Live as A-list stars of modern rock.
Although hailing from Jacksonville , Fla. , this four-piece doesn't so much reinvent Southern rock as resurrect grunge and give it a Southern accent. Picking up where Soundgarden and Alice in Chains left off, singer Brent Smith broods and worries through a dozen songs that are awash in layers of guitar, anxious drums and a slow, pensive bass. Relationships are soured, skies are dark and filled with clouds, and shotguns are raised, but there is something compelling and beautiful about this deliberate exaltation of anguish.
Alanis Morissette proves "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Her purging of emotions struck a chord with millions of listeners, all of whom snapped up Jagged Little Pill in droves. Burned and bitter, Morissette's scathing rants are shaped by producer/craftsman Glen Ballard, who forged songs such as "You Oughta Know" and "Ironic" into bonafide anthems.
This Limp Bizkit-endorsed band manage to filter out some of the fury found on their debut album and replace it with melody for this follow-up from 2001. Filled with dysfunctional relationships, anger and even acoustic guitars, the album went to the top of the charts on the strength of the nu-ballad "Its Been A While."
Cofounded by singer Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root, both of Slipknot fame, Stone Sour is more or less a means for the musicians to explore those sonic ideas that don't fit with the 'Knot's raging nü-metal and horror-movie antics. The outfit's debut album is not a radical departure, but it is far more of a grunge-inspired art-rock affair, inspired equally by Tool and Alice in Chains. This aesthetic really comes out on dystopian brooders "Choose" and "Blotter." Meanwhile, the dark atmospherics and acoustic flavors of "Bother" (a big hit) point to the band's future.
Chad Kroeger continues to question himself, creating the interesting mix of self-loathing and bravado that resulted in world record sales in excess of 29 million -- even non-fans can hum "How You Remind Me." The band's third outing is a little more adventurous, with Peter Frampton-esque voice boxes, fat but sludgy riffs and a surprisingly elegant slide guitar on "Hangnail." The lyrics are more poetic and injured, touching on matters of abuse, complicated relationships and, once again, the fear of dashed dreams.
The band's second album, Make Yourself, finds Incubus settling more comfortably into their skin. The often abrupt segues from monstrous Metal into fuzzy Funk have been softened for a more cohesive sound. Songs such as "Stellar," "Pardon Me" and "Drive" prove the band has a knack for writing a solid pop hook. Without doubt, Make Yourself is the place to start.
The first hit here, "Hanging by a Moment," was the anthem that brought Lifehouse commercial-radio ubiquity, and the rest of the band's debut follows suit with plenty of gruff, mid-tempo ponderings on life's meaning and reverb-soaked atmospheres. To their credit, songs like "Somebody Else's Song" and "Everything" are a sight more sensitive than the grunge brutes next to whom they're too often filed, but when vocalist Jason Wade moans a boiler-plate one-liner like "you're everything," somehow he seems to almost mean it.
The band's second record was just that -- a record by a band. While the debut was more of Dave Grohl's songs spun out of home demos -- this one had the feeling of a new band, not just a former member of Nirvana gone solo. Big hooks, big guitars and big songs such as "Monkey Wrench" and "Everlong" helped to further popularize this very tune-based Punk-Pop band.
A Post-Grunge fairy tale, this 1999 effort was a massive hit and the song "With Arms Wide Open" was an even bigger success. Taking Pearl Jam's big sound and creating something more commercially viable and anthemic, Creed have succeeded where many have failed.
Right out the gate, Seether make it plainly obvious that they worship those '90s alterna-gods Nirvana. Considering most post-grunge acts in the 21st century are obsessed with hyper-compressed power balladry, the group's punkish snarl ("Gasoline" is a genuine rager, as is "Pride") sounds straight-up refreshing. This, of course, doesn't mean the South African trio doesn't entertain forays into the land of the soft; after all, the album's biggest hit is "Broken," a gothic-tinged number that pits Shaun Morgan's cheese-grater howl against the dark-angel lushness of Evanescence's Amy Lee.
The self-titled second effort from Collective Soul clears the sophomore slump hurdle by not straying far from the Post-Grunge-meets-Jangle Pop formula successfully employed on their debut. Hook-laden radio hits such as "Gel" and "December" helped propel Collective Soul to multiplatinum status, surprising many nay-saying critics.
Along with STP's Core and Bush's Sixteen Stone, Frogstomp is one of the foundations of post-grunge, still in its infancy in 1995. Throughout, Silverchair prove to be savvy tunesmiths fusing grunge's calling-card elements: Pearl Jam's somber lyricism, Nirvana's wiry punk, Soundgarden's metal heft. Needless to say, the anguished anthems come fast and hard, from "Tomorrow" and "Pure Massacre" to "Shade" and "Suicidal Dream." That last tune is truly over the top, what with singer Daniel Johns croaking, "The rope is here/ Now I'll find a use/ I'll kill myself." Of course, he was 15 at the time.
Initially signed to Chad Kroeger's 604 Records, Theory of a Deadman are a lot like Nickelback in how they outfit post-grunge with AOR grandeur and all manner of arena-savvy readymades. Actually, on their self-titled debut, they manage to rock quite a bit harder than Kroeger and company. This can be credited in large part to the bluesy wallop underpinning "Nothing Could Come Between Us," "Leg to Stand On" and "Any Other Way." But it also has to do with the fact that the group sounds more well versed in classic rock tropes -- they come off like grunge dudes way into Bad Company and Montrose.
Believe it or not, Matchbox Twenty had been together for just over a year before releasing their debut. Yourself Or Someone Like You was a massive success thanks in large part to the group's knack for grafting arena-sized hooks to jangly alterna-pop (think the Gin Blossoms crossed with Collective Soul). With his rich and deep voice, Rob Thomas is the superstar x-factor, coming off like a cute and cuddly Eddie Vedder. The big hits were "Push" and the charmingly restless "3 a.m.," but "Long Day," "Real World," "Back 2 Good" and "Girl Like That" all found their way on to mainstream radio.
There are a host of would-be singles on Chris Daughtry's debut album, and many were written or co-written by Daughtry himself. The first hit is the Nickelback soundalike "It's Not Over," featuring a huge, anthemic chorus. Other highlights include Daughtry's own composition, "Home," as well as "Used To," "Over You" and "There and Back Again," a Soundgarden-esque song co-written by Shinedown's Brent Smith. This deluxe package comes with three bonus tracks: a live version of "It's Not Over" (which starts with screaming fans and a bass solo) and a pair of solo acoustic tracks.
This debut album from Kansas City's Puddle of Mudd reveals them to be much more than just Limp Bizkit fans with angsty guitars. This alt-metal quartet deserves their Cinderella story, kicked off when they slipped a Bizkit security guard a demo tape and ended up as one of the first acts on Fred Durst's Flawless Records. This album shows them raging with the venom of Korn, then deftly showing their inner Weezer on "She Hates Me," only to return with the bored suburban snarl of "Bring Me Down." Arena rockers even before they ever hit an arena.
