10 Rock Bands That Made Metal Songs

It's easy to put Soundgarden in a box as the Led Zeppelin of their generation. Aside from Chris Cornell's bluesy vocals bearing a strange resemblance to Robert Plant, the rest of the band seemed to take a few more cues from Zeppelin's playbook, always tackling new ideas and trying to reinvent the wheel every now and again when they went into the studio. Zeppelin was the main influence early on, but 4th of July practically touches on Black Sabbath's darkest territory.

After getting through some of the more groove heavy songs like Spoonman and Fell On Black Days, 4th of July is practically a doom metal song for most of its runtime, with Chris Cornell tuning his guitar down incredibly low to get a real snarl out of it. Though the end result wasn't actually tuned properly, the entire message behind it is just to give an attitude to the whole thing, while Chris paints pictures with his lyrics that are just abstract enough to form an image in your head.

With Matt Cameron following the riff with the tom heavy drum sound, the entire track just feels like the metal monstrosity that Ozzy talked about in Iron Man finally come to life, stomping across the land and consuming everything in its path. Soundgarden were always trying to make songs that no one had ever heard before, so why not throw in a track that sounds like you're entering the bowels of Hell?