The worst band ever

I quite liked the "Black Album" but aside from that Metallica is overrated. They're cold, sterile, emotionless and pretentious.

This should probably go in state your unpopular opinions.

 

Yup.

 

Nirvana kinda destroyed rock n roll swagger once and for all, and today we all suffer the consequences, living in a world without rock stars, leather, spandex and excess.In my opinion, nirvana ruined rock music . They pretty much created all of the crappy bands that most of us hate today. They influenced a bunch of kids who knew some power chords to form punk bands, which leaves us with blink-182, sum 41, new found glory, etc. they also made all of this "sad, depressed, suicidal" crap popular, which leaves us with papa roach, korn, boxcar racer, etc. Nirvana did somewhat ruin rock music because of what it would influence later on. i.e post-grunge, nu metal, rap rock, and I'll even go as far as saying that they influenced mainstream emo/screamo which along with "crunk music" would lead to the worst abomination of all, Brokencyde. Simply put, grunge influenced post-grunge which influenced nu metal and rap rock since most of those bands share the "Oh my whole life is horrible, fuck everything" attitude. Bands from all three of those genres pretty much fed off of the cash of angsty teens and stupid douchebags who don't know shit about music. Not to mention all of the scene kids who worship Kurt Cobain just because he died. Grunge did more damage to rock music then any other style after it faded away liking rock music just became uncool especially with all the rap taking center Stage in the 90s. 98-99 when nu metal started to grow and become main stream like korn and limp bizkit, the only rock that was left after Cobaine died was what Hoottie and the blowfish and other acts similar to them. All other heavy metal acts that were still around sort off when underground for the majority of the 90's. Remember back then it was all about RAP MUSIC you had entire generation of kids talking and acting BLACK and that led to people making fun of rock music & heavy metal all i heard back then was "ohh you listen to that white boy shit". The grunge bands killed the bling effect of rock and the music industry sat on their hands too long on how to deal with internet sales/protection... they screwed themselves. Old time rock n roll might not have been as arty as grunge, but it sure was a heck of a lot more fun.

 

Yeah. Nirvana slayed 'em all right.

 

Well having not been of age in the 80's, I cannot really hold that same gripe towards Nirvana. Hair metal bands certainly were not an exception to cash in on trendiness and youth.

I think Nirvana was a necessity. Radiohead and Tool are two bands that came in the wake of Nirvana, bands I'd put up there with some of the greatest Rock music ever made.

If we're going to grant some legitimacy to Poison and Warrant and shit, I don't think Korn is that bad either.

 

I am 53year old woman. I was alive and rocking during all of this. It was grunge fans that thought it was cool to hate metal bands because hair metal bands, not nirvana were the mainstream. They called it cock rock. Fans of alternative music (which encompassed a whole lot of types of music that never gets credit) tended to become elitist snobs and turn their noses up at all metal because of this. "Hair metal" bands were despised by heavier metal fans and grunge fans. Your typical Slayer fan was not particularly fond of Poison and up and coming grunge bands weren't either. When grunge came along, music labels dumped all interest in metal bands and grunge became mainstream. If you weren't grunge, labels wouldn't look at you. If anything is worthy of being hated on, it is the mind-numbing decade of post-grunge like creed and sickening pop-punk,like Green Day and blink 182 that needs to take a dirt nap. Grunge was very pesimistic, I don't need anybody to remember me how hard life is! Grunge turned the 90s into a musical wasteland. Nirvana? Cool. Soundgarden? Old-fashioned head-banging music. Pearl Jam? Proved that you could be the most popular and the most uninteresting at the same time. Grunge fans' faith in their heroes' purity is touching - I'm sure Cobain was never concerned about "getting chicks," lol.

 

Honestly somehow it always seems that I'm dreaming of
Something I could never be
It doesn't matter to me cause I will always be that pimp that I see in all
Of my fantasies
I don't know your fucking name, so what let's
Screwing may be, the only way that I can truly be free
From my fucked up reality
So I dream and stroke it harder cause it's so fun to see
My face staring back at me
I don't know your fucking name, so what let's fuck
All day I dream about sex
All day I dream about fuckin'
All day I dream about sex, yes
All day I dream about sex, and
All day I dream about sex, and
All day I dream about sex, and
All day I dream about sex, yes
All day I dream about sex
All day I dream about sex
All day I dream about fuckin'
All day I dream about sex
All day I dream about fuckin'


Is that better for you?

 

Nirvana gets way too much credit.I am 53year old woman. I was alive and rocking during all of this. I think the only reason Nirvana and other grunge bands became popular is because teenage kids liked the depressing whiny no-talent music. It was just a stupid fad that kids liked back then, but unfortunately that stupid fad ended up ruining rock music. The grunge movement really started in 1992, but it wasn't a "shock" or something, and it actually COEXISTED with the successful hair/heavy metal bands. The hype was huge, but no one took the music seriously. Nevermind, elevated that scene and gave it pop credibility, but that is all. Grunge was a marketing term that lead to an early death for a bunch of music. This will sound stupid, but I honestly think Weird Al was responsible for getting more people into Nirvana than Nirvana themselves were. Mostly I remember people making fun of them for the lyrics being "impossible" to understand when "Teen Spirit" first came out, and those of us who were into music were still too wrapped up in our Iron Maiden or Van Halen or Poison and Motley Crue or Guns n Roses or whatever albums to care much for a while. But I'd wager that Weird Al's record sold way more copies to kids at that time than Nevermind did, and I actually knew people who didn't like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at first but started liking it after "Smells Like Nirvana" broke.

For me I remember just not "getting" SLTP at all when it came out. Why the hell is MTV playing this crap and not the new Slaughter video!? But as for the other people? I don't think you really saw the changeover take place until at least late 1992. I'd bet everything I own that more people in this area bought Def Leppard's Adrenalize than bought Alice in Chains' Dirt that year. Plus, I don't think I ever really saw any of the huge backlash against metal/hair-metal like you read about around here - all the people I knew who loved grunge also still liked Guns 'N' Roses and Ozzy and Metallica and whatnot. You'd probably get made fun of if you were still a huge Winger fan or something, but it seemed like most people just went along with the "alternative revolution" because that was what was happening at the time, not because they suddenly woke up and hated metal one day.

 

I think popular music just goes in cycles. It's kind of inevitable. I found Nirvana exciting and new. It just fit with the times. But I don't get why people get so worked up about pop music. Most of it's disposable anyway. Three chords and a cloud of dust.

 

Cobain's image was based on sort of anti-fashion stance, but he ended up being somewhat fashionable and glam in spite of himself. In the 90s, you didn't hire Anton Corbijn to direct your video without having some concern for putting across an image. I thought Soundgarden sounded like a million other bands, and I just never got the infatuation with Pearl Jam. They actually sounded to me like a bunch of wannabe folkies, or maybe a bunch of folkies who had jumped on the grunge bandwagon. I can't even be bothered verifying whether that is historically accurate, except that I know a couple of them came from Green River. There's an anecdote about Def Leppard doing an unplugged performance at a radio station in the post-grunge era in which they played several unplugged numbers with three-part harmonies. When the DJ commented, “That was incredible,” Joe Elliot replied, “You must be a product of the nineties. There is nothing incredible about three guys singing in tune.” I remember grunge was identified as a movement and game-changer almost as soon as it hit, whereas hair metal wasn't even a term used for that music until many years later. Most of the bands in that genre probably saw themselves in the same harmless fun, hard rocking/pop tradition started by Van Halen. When I think of 1992, I remember "Let's Get Rocked"-era Def Leppard and Slaughter alongside Nirvana on MTV. It's not like September 1991 hit and Bret Michaels suddenly had to go get a job at IHOP. What really makes this time special I think is it's the last time young people were all bonded together by a common music culture. This was pre-internet, and everyone still watched the same videos on MTV, whether it was Dr. Dre, Def Leppard or Metallica.

 

I think I get what you mean. Well it wasn't kind of "post-modern" like everything seems to be today. I liked Faith No More and Jane's Addiction. And I always thought Rush were simultaneously the best and worst band ever...Because. You Know.

 

Lol

 

I don't pine for the days of hair metal and big rich rock stars at all. What Nirvana and grunge got us out of was every bit as bad as what it got us into. Maybe... Both eras are God awful.

 

In the mid-late 70s many of the earliest heavy metal bands still considered themselves hard rock or rock and roll. Black Sabbath avoided calling themselves "metal", even though the media attached that label to them.
Even Judas Priest only started calling themselves metal heading into the 80's. "Grunge" was indeed a term created to lump a bunch of bands together that sounded remotely similar, used essentially for marketing purposes. I think you'll find that the media/labels are always keen to create catchy like term's, such as "Grunge" or "Glam" to help market such music.

 

Also, I know Led Zep are lionized beyond Godlike, and I appreciate the musicianship, but they are way too much for me. I mean I have got into them a bit over the years, mostly because I thought I ought to, but I just find them too much. Whoary ol' chauvinist walking cliche. So shoot me.

 

Nirvana and all the other grunge bands were nothing but a bunch of kids who barely knew how to play their instruments. They sounded like very amateurish garage bands.



On the other hand, bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, Winger, Bon Jovi, Poison and Def Leppard were absolute experts at their instruments. Plus they were older and had much more musical experience. They were true serious musicians, not just a bunch of garage band kids like the grunge bands.



There is just no comparison. My point was that the barrier to entry to be in a rock band went way down almost overnight. And the music that was easiest to play was grunge since it didn't feature guitar solos - it was all power chords. 3 guys in a garage could practice over a weekend and suddenly had a "band." The fact that grunge died off so quickly is testament to the fact that the low barrier to entry made it easy to quit...just like in software businesses. It is really funny now to look back at the bands that were grouped in as "grunge" and how vastly different their sound is. "Grunge" was just a marketing term. Grunge music itself what started by corporate labels as a means to attract the mainstream public. Even Kurt Cobain admits that he just prepackaged a sound that had been captured by bands like Dinosaur Jr, The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Big Black and a bunch of other bands from the 80s. What he did differently is he used simple pop hooks. Sonic Youth was responsible for getting Nirvana signed in the first place. There was nothing groundbreaking about Nirvana.

As '91 and '92 happened, the metal bands were losing members and generally falling apart, generally through their own excess (Motley Crue, Warrant, Cinderella, Poison). Bon Jovi put out "Keep the Faith" and while it didn't sell at the level of its predecessors, it was a hit and I wonder if other similar bands could've survived just by staying active through the era. I think grunge gets entirely too much credit for this. Most hair metal fans weren't interested in a "cool" image--in fact a lot of them were casual listeners, if I remember correctly. I knew plenty of people into Poison et al, but none of them were music freaks. There's no way hair metal could last much longer since it started around '82/'83... it's just the way it goes, musical trends change, Nirvana gets way too much credit.

 

Of the major bands considered "grunge" I think Nirvana was the only one that didn't have substantial Guitar Solos. Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains all had guitar solos, even on some of their most recognizable songs. (I.E. Alive-Pearl Jam)

 

What really separates Led Zeppelin, say, from "Hair Metal"?

Both had long hair. Both had over-the-top stage shows and self indulgent music videos. Both wore flashy costumes. Both sang about sex, drugs and rock n' roll and groupies.

Or for that matter, the 70s Stones. What separates them in any real way from Warrant? Basically "Hair Metal" became a term used by angry Gen X-ers to describe fun rock while they wallowed in self hating grunge nonsense. Everything "Hair Metal" did was first explored by Zeppelin, down to the power ballad structure. I also liked the sincerity and lack of irony in hair metal. When grunge and alternative came in, a sense of irony and we-know-better crept into rock that never really left.

 

The "Hair Metal" era, roughly '83 to '92 or so, represents the last time Heavy Metal was truly relevant. It represents the last time rock was culturally 'dangerous' and also fun as a genre - when rockstars still roamed the Earth. I can see the negative thoughts people have about it - being too corporate and gimmicky. But It was a period when rock was good (for me anyway) and then by like 93 and on rock became depressing sounding with snarling growling singers who were depressed.

 

I never disparaged good time Rock 'n' Roll as "hair metal." I used to go to a local rock club that showcased these types of band and enjoyed them in a non-ironic way. I just found some of the new early nineties bands to be exuberant and inspiring. They were a continuation of what Dinosaur jr, Sonic Youth and all those bands had done. And the pay-backs between suchlike and the new "grunge" bands was reciprocal. Along with "shoegaze" it was the scene me and my friends were into. It was current. Whether it was good or bad music I cannot say. Also the lyrical content was different. Not better or worse just different.