10 Most Important Hard Rock Bands Of The 90s

10. Korn

At the very beginning, grunge was what really started the moodier side of rock and roll going. Though the likes of Soundgarden might have had a little bit more bite from the usual hair metal scene, you could still see the rootsy band at the heart of it all. It would take a few more years for the angst to set in, and Korn made their presence known from the minute they hit the scene.

In 1994, there was no real way to describe what these guys were even doing, playing guitars that were detuned to an absurd level and Jonathan Davis going on long rambling tangents that made him sound somewhere between a metal singer and someone who's just escaped from a mental institution and decided to front a band. As much as the lyrics themselves may have been really disturbing, we were on the cusp of something a lot more aggro than what had come before.

While there had been rap rock before, you can really credit Korn with pioneering the nu metal aesthetic. Sure, they may not have had the clear hip hop chops of someone like Linkin Park from a few years later, but the entire vibe of a tortured kid looking to lash out about all the pain in his life is practically the blueprint for what every heavy band tried to do later on. There was a lot of ugliness on display with those first records, but that's a darkness that touches a lot more hearts than people realize.