10 Perfect Albums Where Metal Went Alternative

For all of the bands that got lumped into the conversation of grunge, you have to remember that these bands that came from Seattle didn't sound alike at all. Nirvana were never going to play a song that sounded like the Melvins and the entire aesthetic of Pearl Jam seems completely alien to what you would hear out of Mudhoney. If you had to pick a band that really encapsulated what the genre meant though, Superunknown by Soundgarden really is the perfect candidate for grunge.

Out of all the bands that came from Seattle in its heyday, Soundgarden's slow rise was all building to an album like this, taking all of their influences from classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and putting their own dark spin on it, from the depressing slog of Fell on Black Days to Chris Cornell screaming like a banshee on The Day I Tried To Live. Even with all of the dark imagery though, the songs are incredibly catchy as well, like the Black Dog-esque start-stop dynamics of Spoonman or when they basically make a heavy metal version of a Beatles track on Black Hole Sun.

There's a lot to unpack on here stylistically, but there's never a moment where the album starts to feel disconnected by any stretch. Grunge was already a collage of many different genres smashing into each other, and this is the kind of record that Black Sabbath would have probably given their approval to.