10 Albums That Changed Rock History

Not every band slogging it out on the road is looking to hit the big time. More often than not, rock bands tend to get together for the love of the music before realizing that they have something good on their hands. When they reach the top though...that's where it starts to get interesting.

As long as rock music has thrived, these artists have come out with albums that completely altered the course that rock music would take going forward. Whether it was from the music itself or the way it was made, these were the albums that broke down the barriers of rock being just a handful of chords and distortion. No...this was a genre worth paying attention to and had the capacity to enlighten your mind and change the world around you after listening to it.

That may not have been the goal when making these records, but you could definitely feel the shift once it happened. Off the back of these albums, hundreds of bands were launched and signaled the next wave of rock that was about to infiltrate the airwaves for years to come. No matter how you felt about the actual songs, you knew things were going to be different after the last song played.

A lot of people tend to forget how much the alternative revolution opened up the playing field for newer artists. Years before any of the grunge movement started, acts like Jane's Addiction and Faith No More would have been considered left of the dial, and were now seeing mainstream success unlike anything they had seen before. So why not bring in some rap and turn it into one of the biggest smashes of the '90s?

Coming up in the same LA scene that produced people like Ratt and Warrant, Rage Against the Machine were the antithesis to all rock going forward, with guitar solos combined with the furious anger from Zack de la Rocha. Aside from some of the more political bents they would tackle on tracks like Settle for Nothing, the music itself was something to behold, with Tom Morello using digital effects that had most people wondering if they were actually listening to a guitar.

Since most of the alternative stream brought things back to rootsier rock, this was the equivalent of putting every single catchy aspect of rock and roll and using it to try to affect change on the ground level. It's not always the sunniest record to listen to, but never forget that your anger is a gift.