10 Rock Bands That Invented Their Own Genre

10. The Melvins

When the entire culture of rock started to change in the early '90s, most people pointed to Nirvana as the moment where everything reached a turning point. Since these were the first guys on MTV to be called pure grunge, it looked like they were the ones who got the entire ball rolling with this kind of music, right? As it turns out, years before Kurt Cobain started a moshpit in a gym, Buzz Osbourne already had his finger on pulse of grunge rock.

At the time that the Melvins were breaking onto the scene though, it was hard to even categorize the kind of music they were making. Though you had bits and pieces of weird musical artists like Frank Zappa in there, these guys loved their Sabbath records and weren't afraid to show it, with songs that were heavy as hell and also employing the drop D tuning to a lot of their guitars.

When you peel back the layers of some of these songs though, all the pieces of grunge rock are there, from the heavy as hell riffs to the vibe of the music that sounds like it's gurgling up from a murky swamp in the middle of the hinterland. In the coming years though, the Melvins continued to be ahead of the curve, almost setting the stage for stuff like stoner rock on the sludgier side of their catalog as well. The other bands in Seattle may have been more photogenic, but this is about as pure a grunge experience as you can find.