10 Rock Bands That Made Metal Songs

Billy Corgan may have had one of the more eclectic musical tastes of anyone coming out of the alternative revolution. Even talking about making some of his pop hits like Today, he had talked about listening to some of the most depressing music imaginable on one day and than switching over to the Lovin Spoonful just a few hours later. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness remains his opus though, and we got to see the full scope of what Billy could do here.

While Bullet With Butterfly Wings was a much darker stripe by the Pumpkins standards, that was more gothic than anything too heavy. When you actually bought the record, here comes Jellybelly to hit you like a sledgehammer, with Billy tuning his guitar down low and turning in one of the gnarliest guitar riffs to ever turn up on a Pumpkins record. For as much as metal wasn't getting screen time on MTV, this is the kind of song that someone like Dimebag Darrell would have been proud to say that he had written.

The whole thing goes by so fast that it's almost easy to forget that a pop gem like Tonight Tonight came just a few songs ago. Billy may have had a knack for writing some of the most pop friendly alt rock of the decade, but this wasn't just your average Gen Xer. This was a closeted thrash metal fan that was just waiting to let out all of that aggression.