10 Greatest Rock Bands With Two Guitar Players

Of all the great frontmen to come out of the Seattle rock scene, Chris Cornell could have easily gotten by on just the strength of his voice alone. While people like Eddie Vedder may have been a bit of an acquired taste back in the day, the primal wail that came out of Cornell's throat seemed to be channeling the same energy Robert Plant had in Led Zeppelin's prime, only with a more metallic edge informed by the grunge scene. Chris always gravitated back to guitar though, and his warped songwriting vision was always perfect working off of Kim Thayil.

Looking at what Kim's doing though, it's almost impossible to pinpoint where he's going to go a lot of the time, taking different solos that sound like utter chaos or creating songs in dissonant tunings that sound like the dirtiest song that Black Sabbath never actually made. For all of Kim's weirdness though, Chris could definitely keep up with him, being just as heavy penning riffs like the stoner rock sludge of 4th of July or the warped beauty of Black Hole Sun, which sounds like the Beatles by way of Black Sabbath.

When all of the other grunge bands were being informed by the aesthetic of punk rock, Soundgarden always seemed proud of their metal roots, with every guitar on their records having a significant amount of crunch behind it. You can definitely spot the influences of someone like Sabbath or Zeppelin in a song like Spoonman if you wanted to, but in the days when grunge was just starting to come into its own, you weren't going to mistake these snarling guitars for anybody else.