10 Grunge Songs That Are Insanely Heavy

Before the '90s, grunge didn't really have a name yet. During the time when hair metal bands still reigned supreme across MTV, the era of dirty punk infused rock had almost no chance of actually getting on the charts. If you looked hard enough though, you could see Sonic Youth planting the seeds of what the genre would become right before the '90s started.

Though the band gets a lot more credit these days as being one of the progenitors of noise punk and absorbing the sounds of the original punks back in the '70s, the raw sound of Kool Thing is much closer to what we would see coming out of Seattle. As Kim Deal's disaffected vocals guides everything, you can practically hear the guitars at war with each other in the background, dividing up their parts between catchy licks and what sounds like Thurston Moore trying to torture his instrument.

It's also worth mentioning the Chuck D style improvisations going on in the background, adding to the anything goes mentality that most grunge was about at the time. In the wake of this album's success, the band's label even placed bets on what the new roster would look like, betting that a little album called Nevermind could do just as well. Even though grunge hadn't really been born when this song was released, Sonic Youth were first in line for alternative rock years before the cool kids got there.