10 Hard Rock Albums MUCH Better Than You Remember

All of the grunge music coming out of Seattle ended up taking a drastic turn after 1994. Whereas the focus had always been about more dark topics, the initial spark and creativity behind these tunes got all too uncomfortable once Kurt Cobain took his own life. Though grunge icons like Alice in Chains kept on trucking, the resulting album was one of the darkest they would ever create.

Much like Cobain, singer Layne Staley was nursing a horrible heroin habit, which caused many sessions to grind to a halt. Still wanting to make things work within the confines of AOC, this record sees Jerry Cantrell taking the reins a little more, with songs like Over Now and Heaven Beside You being showcases for his voice. Though there is a lot of fragmented beauty to go around, this also leads to some of their most introspective tracks yet.

As opposed to the more brooding tracks on Dirt and especially Jar of Flies, tracks like Sludge Factory feel like the band are tapping into a different kind of melancholy, almost as if they know that this lineup is not going to last.

Shortly after this was released, that eventually came to fruition, with AOC going on hiatus until Staley succumbed to his demons in 2002. While this is a sad epitaph of where the core lineup ended up, it's nice to know that even at their worst, they could still make great music together.