10 Hard Rock Albums Everyone Takes For Granted

Most of the post Cobain era of grunge tends to be a shell of what the original Seattle sound once was. After the likes of Creed and Nickelback started to poke at grunge's corpse, it was clear that the genre had really been soaked of all the goodwill it had left. That is, unless you decided to go unplugged.

Unlike the more forceful imitations like Candlebox, Days of the New's debut was a healthy change of pace from grunge's plodding rhythms. Off the strength of Touch Peel and Stand, Travis Meeks showed himself to be a worthy songwriter for the time, speaking about pain and isolation as if he'd lived with them his entire life. The acoustic mood of this album really plays to its advantage too, almost acting like the true fully unplugged album that Alice in Chains never actually got around to making.

In fact, things may have been going just a little too well at the time, with Meeks never really being able to recapture this kind of open hearted earnestness on any of the subsequent albums. Even though Days of the New tends to feel like a relic from the '90s these days than anything else, the songs on here did give a subtle glimmer of hope that maybe grunge hadn't said it's last piece just yet.