12 '90s Hard Rock Albums Everyone Should Own

The ‘90s were a time of great change for music, with hip hop gaining mainstream prominence, various genres of dance becoming ever more popular, and a wave of boy and girl bands and major popstars around every corner.

Among all that, though, it was also a pretty great decade for rock, which entered a new era of sincerity, anger, and raw noise. The grunge scene stole the headlines, with a slew of flannel-clad, unwashed bands from Seattle tapping into teenage angst at just the right time to create a real movement based on noise and woe.

This opened the floodgates for a decade of self reflection, with rock stars singing less about glamour and success and more about anguish, social issues, and that perennial favourite topic: themselves.

The sheer amount of music coming out of this boom period means that there’s a lot of sludge to wade through when it comes to the ‘90s, but for fans of guitars, feelings, and shouting, these are a dozen albums that make up the bedrock of any collection.

Of all the bands lumped into the early ‘90s grunge scene, Alice In Chains are perhaps the most deserving of the label - not because their music particularly defines the genre, but because they sound genuinely mucky. The title of sophomore album Dirt is not a misnomer - this is a record steeped in filth and grime.

A band with more than its share of demons, Alice In Chains were in soul searching mode for Dirt. Singer Layne Staley particularly found himself in a dark place, and channelled his issues with substance abuse into songs like "Sickman" and “Junkhead”, titles that tell you exactly what the songs are going to be like.

Their vibe is apocalyptic, and much of the metal scene that shortly followed grunge are inspired by Dirt to the point of taking liberties. Guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell achieves one of the heaviest six string sounds on record, and the slow, grinding pace of the songs only makes things more ominous.

Alice In Chains’ music only gets gloomier from here as certain members descended further into darkness which may not be to everyone’s taste, but this album captures them at an incredible moment, far more inventive and inspirational than they often get credit for.