10 Most Underrated Guitarists In Rock Music History

There was no real rhyme or reason for what a guitar hero was supposed to be during the grunge era. Anything went once Nirvana turned the rock scene on its head, and suddenly you had bands that were either trying to make outright noise with their guitar or trying to keep things fairly simple. Soundgarden may have been one of the more straight ahead rock acts to come out of Seattle, but you can't really call anything that Kim Thayil plays to be normal by any stretch.

Throughout every one of Soundgarden's records, Kim was responsible for some of the strangest solos to come out at the time, either burying his guitar over layers of distortion on songs like Black Hole Sun or making riffs that never actually fit into a normal time signature, with songs like Outshined being hammered out in 7/4 time. There was a certain amount of taste to what Kim did as well, like the subtle sounds of Spoonman's opening solo almost sounding closer to what someone like George Harrison would have played.

For all the newspapers who wanted to describe grunge as a movement, there was a lot more to it than a bunch of guys in flannels playing sludgy riffs. You had to really know your musical idols, and Kim Thayil seemed to fill in the gaps where Tony Iommi, Jimmy Page, and Mick Jones had left off years before.