10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Grunge Music

For all of the heavy riffs that were coming out of the Seattle scene, metal had a fairly hard time clicking during the grunge movement. Unless you were one of the titans of the genre like Metallica or Pantera, some of the newer bands that were playing riffs didn't really stand a chance unless they were decked out in a flannel shirt or wearing Doc Martens whenever they played. Alice in Chains were always proud of their metal roots though, and they needed that kind of darkness if they were going to take on something like Dirt.

While Facelift set the stage for what the grunge sound would become in the early '90s, this album was where the band started to inject real pain into their records, documenting the different vices each member was having, with Layne Staley in particular sinking deeper and deeper into heroin addiction. Even though not every song on here is about that darkness, the vibe coming off of the record is much closer to metal than alternative, like the dramatic build of a song like Rooster or kicking down the door by singing about your own mortality on Them Bones.

As depressing as the record might sound on paper, there's also subtle hints of light sprinkled throughout the album as well, like when Staley's vocals blend with Jerry Cantrell's in just the right way on certain parts of the record. There's a lot of beauty to be found here, but what you're hearing is a band at their creative best licking their wounds from all the damage they've put on themselves.