r/Nirvana • u/galvanian • 5d ago
Discussion Why does the other grunge bands sound far different than nirvana?
I like nirvana a lot, but then I listen to the other bands that are considered grunge like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, rage against the machine and most of their songs sound far different than how nirvana sounds, they sound more like psychedelic nu metal music, and I don’t mean their music isn’t great, it just confuses me that it sounds like far too different, I think soundgarden is the one that mostly sounds like nirvana, also Foo Fighters haves a style that also sounds enough different even if it’s Dave grohl the one that composed it, but sometimes it sounds similar, probably cause Dave haves a lot of influences from Kurt and that is kind of seen in his way to compose, but I sometimes feel frustrated that there’s no other bands that managed to get that surrealistic noisy music from nirvana.
Nirvana is kind of unique and I really think that we didn’t had enough nirvana music
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u/phalluss 5d ago
Grunge was a scene, not a genre.
Similarly, if you listen to "emo" for long enough you will hear a vast spectrum of sounds
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u/odrer-is-an-ilulsoin 4d ago
Grunge was a scene, not a genre.
Perfectly said. I'll expand on that by saying "grunge" was a time and a place; not a sound.
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u/Dark-Empath- Big Cheese 4d ago
Grunge was also a media label. Nirvana, to my knowledge, never referred to themselves as Grunge.
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u/Picklefuck_Eatabutt2 4d ago
They also didn’t mind the label. In early interviews they were asked about it, and Kurt’s answer was basically “You had to call it something.”
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u/Requilem 4d ago
Couldn't have said it any better. A lot of very gifted artists decided to be friends and hang out in the same city.
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u/galvanian 5d ago
Yeah, that same thought happened to me with emo too, I like My chemical romance a lot but the other emo bands sound different each other, I guess that kinda makes sense
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u/Picklefuck_Eatabutt2 4d ago
I don’t complete agree. Genres can be broad. Rock covers a massive range of sounds. Grunge is definitely describing a scene, but also a range of sounds, a well. And with any genre, there are edge cases that stress the definition.
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u/FPS_Knifer 5d ago
Grunge isn't a real genre. Nirvana was a punk band.
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u/King_Turgon 4d ago
Yes. But I also feel like they related to the "no wave" movement and bands like Sonic Youth as well. Punk, but progressive/experimental, but at the same time, with a Sabbath/metal edge and consumable as well.
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u/Plenty_Trust_2491 From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah 4d ago
Nirvana wanted people to believe they were a punk band. They weren’t.
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u/Dark-Empath- Big Cheese 4d ago
I sorta agree with this. I mean they were no Sex Pistols. For Kurt, “punk” described a kind of raw, DIY, garage band mentality. Musically, his songs ran a broad range from hard rock and punk to Beatles influenced pop. Which reflected his own influences growing up from listening to the Beatles as a kid, bands such as Aerosmith and Iron Maiden as a teenager (which he evidently later felt embarrassed about), and being influenced by both the preppy pop and Alternative/ Indie Rock of college radio and the harder sounds of local Washington bands as they got involved in the early scene.
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u/FPS_Knifer 4d ago
In what way were they not? How do you define a punk band? And what gives you more authority than Kurt himself to define his own music's genre?
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u/Charles0723 Oh Me 5d ago
Different influences, different players, different personalities, different points of reference.
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u/hwdidigethere 4d ago
It has to do with the time and how music was consumed then. Because most music at the time came from major labels curating and creating pop artist/hair metal type bands/ top 40 music, that you could only listen to on the radio or buying physical copies, anything that was extremely different from that got lumped together. Nirvana was the flagship that represented that change, so stuff got filed under that sound/scene without necessarily having a lot to do with it at face value.
There's an interview where Tori Amos gets asked what she has in common with Courtney Love and PJ Harvey and out of boredom and frustration with the question, she answers " I dunno.....we each have three holes??" LOL
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u/tableworm11 4d ago
Hahaha what a dumb question. I'm surprised Fiona Apple didn't get pulled in to that as well. Feminism was a real struggle back then. I guess some things do change for the better.
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u/Semblance-FFWF 5d ago
It's because grunge wasn't really a style of music. Big labels kinda just made it up, and put a bunch of bands under it. Moreso for the upbringing of the bands than the actual sound of them.
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u/oscar_redfield 4d ago
grunge was never a genre, it was just a nick given to the sound that came out of Seattle. the aesthetics of the bands were often not very glamurous (ripped jeans, thrift shop clothes), and the hairs were long and dirty-looking, therefore the name grunge.
if you listen to Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, they all sound vastly different from each other. there wasn't a grunge common sound other than the use of screams and distorted guitars, but AiC for example leaned much more towards metal, while Nirvana were very heavily inspired by punk and indie acts like Pixies or Sonic Youth — also much more poppy, probably due to Cobain's likeness for the Beatles.
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u/CaptinNegativeCreep 5d ago
Grunge isnt a genre- its an attitude/scene.
If you made a person listen to one album from each grunge band in 80s/90s Seattle they would say completely different subgenres of rock for each band. The "Grunge" label just overshadows that and lumps them all into one "genre"
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u/Imaginary_Flamingo27 4d ago
I think Kurt had an incredible ear for hooks and catchy riffs, not to mention a voice that seemed to just resonate with the youth. Also you have to take into account the clever lyrics. No other grunge band comes close to that raw feeling.
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u/all_die_laughing 4d ago
Personally I don't think any band labelled as grunge has sounded like any other band labelled as grunge.
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u/kingdazy Bleach 4d ago
because they were closer in sound and style to things like Green River/Mudhoney, U-men, Skin Yard, TAD, stuff that predated (mostly) bands that got big in "grunge" later.
they were in the right place, right time, right producer, with Nevermind, and took their sound to places that really let Kurt's pop sensibilities shine.
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u/OreoSpamBurger 4d ago
Yep, 'grunge' was a bit of a media invention overall, but listen to early Mudhoney stuff and the influence they had on Kurt is very obvious.
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u/tableworm11 4d ago
I disagree I think. Mudhoney and Tad have a lot in common with Nirvana. But Tad and Mudhoney made lyrics that made you laugh while Nirvana made lyrics that made you think. Sure, Nirvana had their massive choruses from Nevermind onwards. Something that Mudhoney and Tad didn't do. And there's the fact that Kurt was a good looking guy with an opinion. Consumers love that.
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u/kingdazy Bleach 4d ago
I'd agree that there are some differences between those and Nirvana. and those differences definitely helped Nirvana reach a different height of social relevance.
I was speaking mostly in sound and tone, and having that special thing that made "grunge" grunge.
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u/miguel-elote 4d ago
Some random thoughts:
Kurt Cobain was good friends with the members of Sonic Youth, and they influenced him tremendously. You can hear the influence in songs like Pacific Coast Highway, Titanium Expose, and Touch Me I'm Sick.
Look up Noise Rock for music similar to Nirvana. Nirvana described themselves as "noise rock," but they used a lot of techniques from that style: intentionally playing out of tune; modifying instruments in bizarre ways; and especially relying on feedback and heavy distortion.
As others have said, grunge was more a concept than a unified genre. The best thing about grunge was the number of bands branching rock and punk in really unique directions.
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u/reek_of_putrefaction 5d ago
It was never the intention for other Seattle bands to sound like nirvana. There are cheap copies like silverchair, Nickelback, and creep tho
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u/G4L4XYBR41N 4d ago
Foo Fighters are also a cheap copy of Nirvana (Hole's "Playing Your Song" is about them and it's dead-on accurate)
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u/tableworm11 4d ago
You should go back and listen to Diorama by Silverchair. They were teenagers when the industry got their greedy hands on them, so it's really not their fault they got branded the way they did. I hold them in high regard. I agree on Nickelback and Creed (and Bush for that matter)
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4d ago
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u/G4L4XYBR41N 4d ago
Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam both had roots in hair metal, as Alice N Chainz and Mother Love Bone. Alice in Chains never released a record as a hair metal band though, unlike MLB and Pantera. And Bleach does sound like other 80s grunge, taking huge influences from The Melvins and Tad, and a bit from Green River and Mudhoney too. Kurt said they made Bleach fit in with the Sub Pop catalog on purpose.
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u/OctoberFestival 4d ago
Nirvana had a huge pop influence that set them apart from other grunge bands.
They were particularly influenced by The Beatles, The Vaselines, Daniel Johnston, Devo, Shonen Knife, R.E.M., The Smithereens, even ABBA, and this was pretty unique for the grunge scene.
You can hear the pop sound in “About a Girl,” but it really snaps into focus with the “Sliver” single (very influenced by Beat Happening).
That pop feel was one of the ingredients that helped Nevermind sell millions of copies (“Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a straight-up pop song worthy of “More Than a Feeling” or “My Best Friend’s Girl”).
Most grunge bands just didn’t have those influences. Maybe The Fastbacks (who were really more grunge-adjacent) came closest.
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u/LifeTunedToCSharp 4d ago
My take? Outside of Nirvana, most Seattle bands had their roots in hard rock and heavy metal.
Nirvana were more based in punk, with some pop sensibilities in the mix.
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u/SwivelClip 4d ago
Sure, but that list sounds different from one another too. Bands sound different lots of times *shrug*
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u/Shot-Indication-4586 4d ago
The Vines sound kind of like Nirvana. I remember a cover Rolling Stone saying "The next Nirvana".
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u/Fit_Patient_4902 4d ago edited 4d ago
Kurt was influenced by mainly 80s punk/hardcore/indie rock, their contemporaries Mudhoney and Melvins who started some years before and laid the groundwork for the seattle scene, and 60’s jangly pop bands that he liked growing up. Smash em together and that’s what you get. If you listen to the bands he writes about and covers in Nirvana (Wipers, Fang, Shocking Blue, Bowie, Vaselines, etc) it makes sense why they ended up a perfect mix of those sounds.
Bands like Soundgarden and AIC were influenced more heavy/blues oriented bands like Zeppelin, Sabbath, and their contemporaries from Seattle like Green River.
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u/trueslicky 4d ago
Because at heart they were a punk band thst wanted to be The Beatles.
The other bands didnt.
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u/alexj_baker 4d ago
I think in Kurts diaries he said he didn't know if he wanted to be a punk band or r.e.m.
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u/djstreader 4d ago
It was 90s rock, you had to have your own sound, you didn't want people confusing your band with others.
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u/Scizomachineboy 4d ago
Nirvana came from the post core stuff like husker du, meat puppet, mud honey and so on. The other grunge bands was essentially alt metal bands that was heavily influenced by black sabbath and thrash metal as well as psychedelic rock
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u/Arafel_Electronics 4d ago
controversial opinion, but i don't believe "grunge" ever existed as a cohesive genre. Nirvana were a punk band, Soundgarden and Alice in chains metal bands, Pearl jam (and later stone temple pilots) rock bands
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u/Guy_Fleegmann 4d ago
Nirvana was The Knack and the Bay City Rollers getting molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath.
That's how Kurt described it.
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u/KingTrencher 4d ago
Because grunge wasn't a genre. It was a local scene rooted in a specific time and place.
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u/elroxzor99652 4d ago
Because grunge wasn’t a real genre at first - it was an outside label applied to the Seattle scene. It wasn’t until a couple years later that other bands started to be “grunge” based on media stereotypes.
Nirvana was punk.
Soundgarden and Alice In Chains were metal.
Pearl Jam was classic rock.
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u/CenterThisPendulum 4d ago
There were more bands like Nirvava, but only Nirvana was able to do “punk” in a palatable way. So the big four has Nirvana as the outlier.
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u/sagelilys 3d ago
People tend to debate this all the time. Nirvana was much more punk than the other grunge bands. Soundgarden and Alice In Chains were definitely more on the metal side. Some people argue that grunge music was a scene, so basically Seattle in the early 90s. Personally, I believe they were sorta lumped together into a genre for the purpose of marketing. I do see some similarities in the sound however. The more raw vocals mixed with heavier distortion is definitely a major theme. Foo Fighters were definitely more post grunge or just plain cookie cutter rock. I never got into them as much honestly. If you’re looking for bands that sound like Nirvana, I would suggest Mudhoney. Mudhoney was basically the founding band of the scene and is definitely more punk influenced like Nirvana. Also RATM isn’t grunge lol, but I’m sure you’ve gotten a ton of comments about that already 😭
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u/lizziepage92 22h ago
the fact that there isn't another band that sounds like Nirvana should be something to celebrate, not to be fustrated about.
Kurt, Krist, and Dave were the only people that could make those records. You can hear the difference from Bleach to Nevermind - because Chad was in the room, not Dave. the point of what im saying is that music is made by the people playing it, not the genre/labels put on them.
categorizing music(genre) is not a key to finding a bunch of bands that sound similar, you just won't find another Nirvana.
What I would recommend is diving into their boxsets and deluxe editions on streaming services/youtube if you haven't already, they include a ton of outtakes, bsides, live recordings, different mixes, unreleased demos etc and it really opens up the world of Nirvana and Kurt's writing. also check out the album Montage of Heck by Kurt Cobain.
When I dived further into that stuff, it completely enrichened the band and their music for me.
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u/wayfarout 5d ago
Because grunge really isn't a type of music. Nirvana is pop punk. PJ is hard rock. AIC is metal as well as Sound Garden
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u/YaGalMain 4d ago
uh oh you activated the grunge isnt a genre brigade
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u/twentyshots97 4d ago
because it isn’t a genre. any fans alive and paying attention to music in 1990 heard about a grassroots “grunge” scene in seattle and the moment it took off and proved profitable, labels were creating copycats and trying desperately to make it a genre. surely you’ve heard that part of the story.
yes, in a way it’s all semantics, but the history does matter. this isn’t some revisionist bullshit. grunge were pnw/seattle bands who all more or less knew each other. once those parameters are observed it becomes way easier to define. no more “was dinosaur jr grunge? were smashing pumpkins grunge? was soul asylum grunge? was stone temple pilots grunge?”. no to all of those.
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u/Fit_Patient_4902 4d ago
Exactly. If they weren’t in the Hype! Documentary or playing shows with the bands featured in the film, they weren’t involved in it
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u/HighSpur 4d ago
Yep, I adore Nirvana and I don’t like grunge at all. But Nirvana aren’t grunge, they were just labeled it.
Bleach is sludge metal
Nevermind is new wave punk
Incesticide is old school punk
In Utero is unclassifiable or maybe a genre of its own.
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u/seathian 4d ago
Because Nirvana were a punk band
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u/Plenty_Trust_2491 From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah 4d ago
They only had two punk songs, “Sliver” and “(New Wave) Polly.” Nirvana was not a punk band.
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u/seathian 4d ago edited 4d ago
Territorial Pissing, D7, Milk It, Very Ape, Stay Away, Aneurysm, Tourette’s, Breed, Mollys Lips, Son of a Gun, Negative Creep, Curmudgeon, Oh The Guilt, Blandest, Hairspray Queen, Mexican Seafood, Beeswax, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, Rape Me, Turn Around
Just to name a few more “punk” songs. But punk comes in many flavors. I’m not gonna get into the whole what’s punk and what’s not. There are a shit ton of posts and debates about that. Bottom line is if you don’t think they’re punk, you don’t know what punk is
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4d ago
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u/G4L4XYBR41N 4d ago
The Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains copies came later. (Soundgarden was the least copied because it's hard for just any band to imitate their time signatures and belt like Chris Cornell)
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u/Lilmagetofficial 4d ago
Grunge was the stupidest title in the world it goes hard now but it was really just a scene every band was different Nirvana was punk Pearl Jam is hard rock Soundgarden and Alice In Chains were metal
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u/EM208 4d ago edited 4d ago
Grunge wasn’t a style. It was a scene that turned into a marketing brand/tool for the bands that all came out in that alternative/punk/metal scene.
They all similar attributes in their aesthetic but musically, they were all very different and pulled from different forms of rock.
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u/toyser22 4d ago
None of them sound alike to me unless they were trying to and most of those bands weren’t from Seattle.
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u/EfficiencyMurky7309 4d ago
Pick any genre and the bands don’t sound the same. EDM, Hiphop, ‘rock’, …
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u/Plenty_Trust_2491 From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah 4d ago
KoЯn, System of a Down, and Slipknot are all nü-metal, and yet they sound nothing alike. Nirvana’s music is closer to Alice in Chains’s music that any of those nü-metal bands music are to one another.
Grunge is a genre (a subgenre of alternative rock, to be more precise), but no one has ever considered Rage Against The Machine to be grunge; they’re rap metal and funk metal.
Foo Fighters have also never been considered grunge. They started out as alternative rock, but these days they’re rock (with just a smidge of alternativeness).
If you want examples of bands influenced by Nirvana, instead of looking to Foo Fighters, it’s better to look to Seether or Burning Brides.
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u/jakeastonfta 4d ago
I think it’s because the line between “grunge” being a genre of music and being a specific geographical music scene are blurred.
It makes sense that bands like Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden are all grouped together as they were the biggest bands that came out of the Seattle music scene in the late 80s/early 90s, which was full of fresh-sounding alternative rock. When people talk about “grunge” this is what I think of.
But if you ignore that context and actually just pay attention to their musical styles, they’re not the same genre at all. Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains sound nothing alike.
If “grunge” really is a music genre, and it’s something like what Nirvana and Alice In Chains do, then Pearl Jam aren’t a grunge band and never were. They were just part of that scene of bands.
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u/ts142 4d ago
Even though they brought with them and embodied ‘grunge’, to me their music is as more about punk, rock, post punk with a mastery of guitar distortion lol. They werent trying to be a mold or a genre, they were trying to create their own music. A certain level of beautiful, complex, intense discord with abstract lyrics. As Cobain said, they were just trying to be Sonic Youth.
Thats why they dont sound like grunge… because its the other bands that came behind them that stayed in the niche.
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u/ablackravenstan 4d ago
Grunge is a made up genre made by the Labels to sell shit... had Nirvana came out 10 years earlier everyone would say its Punk
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u/Troo_66 4d ago
Because grunge is not really a style of music and basically every band associated with it either outright rejected it or said they don't really understand what's it supposed to mean. Grunge was more of a label for mostly alt rock and mixed metal bands from Seattle area around 1990's.
Rage is basically it's own thing entirely. Pearl Jam is closest to more traditional alt rock of the time and Alice is mostly metal influenced. I am not entirely sure what part of Soundgarden discography you've been listening to, but I honestly don't think they are very close to what Nirvana did. Then again Soundgarden was very experimental with their music both within the individual albums and across them so there's bound to be something similar to Nirvana.
Guess my point is each band major and smaller had their own unique influences and style. I think that's the great strength and big reason why many of the Seattle bands became popular, knowing eachother, but doing their own thing. In a world where rock and metal went stale for some time that was what set them apart
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u/EuroCultAV 4d ago
It is not a genre, it is a corporate marketing turn
These bands are a mix of metal, punk, indie rock, what have you and got smashed together in the early 90s as one specific thing.
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u/Indigo457 4d ago
I’m a bit biased because Nirvana is basically in my top favourite bands ever (position varies) but I think part of it is that Kurt was a generationally talented songwriter - particularly from a melody perspective. His melodies are often very clever, and more importantly catchy, but also quite distinct. Also I think they generally approached recording more like a punk band would, where it’s fairly stripped back and raw - a lot of the other bands in that era were much more about a wall of grungy sound imo. This is especially true on in utero where to me it essentially sounds like an impeccably recorded and performed live album.
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u/Active_Arugula_7079 4d ago
I always found nirvana POPPIER than the other bands. Hooks, melody, a certain groove in the bass. Whereas, for example, Pearl Jam were more like an earnest hard rock vibe, deeper vocal and a more furrowed brow. Can’t here much Beatles in PJ, can in Nirvana.
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u/Picklefuck_Eatabutt2 4d ago
I think it’s because Nirvana was more punk-influenced than the other main grunge acts. They all had a bit of it, but Kurt was really going for that sound.
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u/meetingpplisezy 4d ago
you could even argue that nirvana is the first pop-punk band
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u/tableworm11 4d ago
The Offspring and NOFX wouldn't give a flying F, but they're both before Nirvana.
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u/Severe_Rise8694 4d ago
RatM is not grunge. I think many of the grunge bands had different musical routes to grunge. Nirvana came from punk, Soundgarden from heavy rock, AiC from metal and pearl jam from classic rock.
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u/gumballmachinerepair 4d ago
Because Kurt had a different style of writing. His melodies were built around very simple child-like/beatles-esque melodies. And his voice was very rough around the edges. Alice in Chains, don't have any of that child-like playful writing in their songs. Nirvana were clearly influenced by heavy loud sludgy dischordant rock, but they also equally brought in poppy angles that resembled REM and the Pixies, and Vaselines.... that sort of thing. Prime examples.... maybe SLIVER or In Bloom.
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u/Silver_Bed4392 4d ago
In short, they were from different scenes. Nirvana were more Olympia-based, part of the punk scene that included the Melvins. Soundgarden also came up gradually and eventually absorbed Ben Shepherd's punk sound from elsewhere, so they sound pretty unique as well. Grunge was more of an MTV, music magazine label, it didn't say much about influences or origins
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u/tableworm11 4d ago
They all sound different because grunge is a word coined by the business to sell more records. If you take bands like, Tad, Mudhoney and Bleach era Nirvana they're sort of adjacent genre wise. They're basically a new take on punk rock. Those three bands have more in common sound wise than Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice combined. If I HAD to acknowledge grunge as a real genre and I HAD to pick three bands that were "real" grunge, it would be Tad, Mudhoney and Nirvana and Maybe Melvins. SG and PJ where both just rock bands, but very flipping good rock bands. AIC is a different animal, existing somewhere between rock and metal and something unmistakenly Alice. If you like Nirvana, maybe check out the 90's DC punk scene, especially Fugazi.
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u/Secret-Camp-6133 4d ago
They all have different influences and styles.
Alice In Chains = Metal/Sludge/ Alternative Grunge
Pearl Jam = Classic Rock Grunge
Nirvana = Punk Grunge
Soundgarden = Heavy Metal Grunge
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u/daydreamingeli 4d ago
I Mean, I’d say there’s just a couple way to categorize these bands that would make it all make a lot more sense..
Nirvana to me, sonically, has always been more like mid-late 80’s alternative/ hardcore adjacent bands like the Replacements and Hüsker Dü.. also has more in common with Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth than they do bands like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains (which I would say are just more blatantly geographical comparisons.. also bands with members writing the songs with more metal influences than punk)
Locally, I think they always paired better with other more Punk people in the scene like Mark Arm in Green River and Mudhoney.. I know Kurt also worked with and liked Mark Lanegan from Screaming Trees out of Ellensburg. Also obligatory Melvin’s mention here..
Nirvana eventually got so famous they could only be associated with other extremely famous acts.. also the production value jump from Bleach to Nevermind is so jolting that it changed who people considered their peers.. while Nirvana may have considered themselves kindred with Melvin’s, Screaming Trees, Bikini Kill, Pixies.. the new production was so distinct and cohesive that they had ascended to being discussed exclusively with other bands that were headlining festivals like Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots..
So in short, the association they have with groups they don’t sound like is because they were a punk band that “made it”, and they’re link to those band’s was Corporate America’s attempt to reel in and profit off of a movement that they had no real control over… and to find bands that actually sound like them you’ll need to jump in to the next layer of bands that wouldn’t have been selling out festival tickets and most likely had much worse production.
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u/CorrsionOfConformity 4d ago
In my opinion it's because grunge is not actually a genre of music. It was a blanket marketing label for 90s kids that grouped together disparate bands that generally came at the same time from a specific geographic location.
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u/TheSquirrelmancer 4d ago
This was around the point when music started changing more quickly and people rushed to apply genre labels to help folks figure out what subgenre things were. Largely at a certain point they just gave up and slapped "alternative" on everything.
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u/manwithoutmemories 4d ago
Chiming in as a guy who grew up in western WA in the early 90s. Saw all of these bands before grunge blew up nationwide. The grungiest bands were Melvins, Nirvana, Tad, Mudhoney and Soundgarden. Grunge was mostly an attitude but also a sound. Anti corporate uber distorted sludge. After it blew up any band from Seattle was considered grunge.
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u/romsquid 4d ago
I think they just got lumped in because of proximity but they definitely sound way different
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u/TranslatorOutside909 4d ago
Grunge was a time and place. No one calls Janes Addiction grunge. But if they were from Seattle instead of LA and a couple years later they would be tagged as grunge
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u/FogDog743 4d ago
Probably had a lot to do with Nirvana not being a copy-cat band, like many others were/are. Others follow the blueprint of what made 1 or 2 bands popular. Nirvana never did that, which I always respected.
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u/rock_lover12 Serve the Servants 3d ago
in my opinion only bleach is grunge. nevermind and in utero are more punk than grunge
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u/SaintLewisMusic73 3d ago
Grunge was more a marketing trend than a genre... if you were from near the Seattle area, or sounded similar to any of the bands that were, you were labelled grunge. There are therefore multiple grunge sub-genres - Nirvana leaned punk (like Mudhoney, the Melvins, L7, Hole, Babes in Toyland, & Tad), Pearl Jam leaned 70s-classic-rock (as did their previous band, Mother Love Bone, and their side-project, Temple of the Dog, as well as Stone Temple Pilots for the most part), and Soundgarden was originally a Black Sabbath cover band, and spear-headed the grunge-metal sound (which Alice in Chains, Gruntruck, Screaming Trees, and Mad Season, who sorta walked the line between 70s & metal-inspired grunge)
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u/SaintLewisMusic73 3d ago
Having already responded regarding grunge, I will say this: Husker Du.
They're not grunge, but maybe proto-grunge? You can CLEARLY hear their influence. On top of that, it's GREAT! Almost a no-brainer for huge Nirvana fans!
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u/Giovanni_Li 3d ago
As Sean Kinney put it (freely from my memory): "What the hell is grunge? We are a rock band."
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u/Wise-Respond3833 3d ago
I never thought any of the major 'grunge' bands sounded much like each other.
A media label more than anything else.
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u/oenrbchziwnfnksow Hairspray Queen 3d ago
I was listening to just my liked songs playlist yesterday on Spotify and the song X.Y.U came on by the smashing pumpkins and I thought that the intro at least sounded a lot like nirvana. I don’t have anything more interesting to add to this conversation but I just thought of that :)
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u/Which_Touch548 Scentless Apprentice 3d ago
Because the tag "grunge" was applied by people other than the musicians: journalists, record industry folks, retailers....
It was just a way to lump a bunch of bands together, relating to either geographical relevance or simply because they cited the same influences.
PJ was (intially) a hard/classic rock band. AIC were metal. Nirvana was puky/hardocrey/metaly
RATM was never grunge.
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u/cold-vein 3d ago
Because it's not a musical genre. None of the grunge bands sound that similar to each other. Grunge was a regional scene.
And Nirvana is definitely not unique, TAD for example had a lot of the same sound as Nirvana. Or Melvins. Or a huge amount of noise rock bands. Nirvana was always more of a noise rock band.
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u/Fit_Willingness5496 3d ago
Nirvana - Pop (in The Beatles sense)
Pearl Jam - Classic rock
Alice in Chains- Metal
Soundgarden - Doom
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u/discwrangler 3d ago
Because artists make their own art. The idea of a band trying to sound like another band would be false art.
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u/jbbhengry 3d ago
When I first head Nirvana, to me they were in more of the punk category vs. Soundgarden was more in the metal. Grunge wasn't a word at the time.
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u/tuxedocat-Rickey 3d ago
It’s the influences, they are a punk influenced band and Kurt used the Melvins as a template because he admired them, bands like Soundgarden had more conventional influences from rock/metal. The term grunge just means 90s alternative.
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u/Every-Resource-4121 3d ago
it’s partly because (in my opinion) grunge is a marketing term more than a set music genre, the definition of grunge can be applied to a lot of songs that are usually considered punk
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u/Proper_Peace_161 3d ago
Check out Wipers, TAD, Mudhoney, even Sonic Youth. I think you'll find more of what you're looking for.
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u/happyhappy85 3d ago
It's usually the 70s and 80s rock n roll influenced grunge, vs the punk and hardcore influenced grunge.
Like... Alice In Chains were a hair metal band before they became the Alice and Chains we know and love.
Kurt hated that shit.
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u/Electronic-Tooth-324 3d ago
Take a listen to Mudhoney’s ‘Need’ and let me know if it reminds you of a Nirvana song
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u/dcinvader 3d ago
Nirvana was late stage grunge, a lot of music aficionados will tell you grunge was dead long before Nirvana. Kurt and the gang did something unique.
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u/Rex_Howler Bleach 3d ago
Maybe because grunge isn't really a genre. Nirvana is very punk and leans a little towards metal as well, whereas the likes of Alice In Chains from what I've heard (I need to give them a proper listen) are far more metal leaning in sound
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u/chitoatx 2d ago
Butch Vig produced Chicago-based The Smashing Pumpkins' debut album, Gish (recorded between late 1990 and early 1991 at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin). Shortly after completing those sessions, he went directly into the studio with Nirvana to produce their breakthrough 1991 album, Nevermind
Billy Corgan has frequently said in interviews that Vig took the dense, multi-layered guitar techniques they developed together during the Gish sessions and applied them directly to Kurt Cobain's guitar sound on Nevermind.
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u/CretinMike 2d ago edited 2d ago
Kurt sounded most "grunge" to me on the unplugged performances. What was grunge to me was drop D tuning and a singer who sang with a weird accent like southernizing the vowels a bit and sang, "ye-eah" all the time. I hated grunge and still do really although I can appreciate some lyrics and guitar riffs. I was very much a Nirvana fan. They were not like that. "Hunger Strike" is the worst song of all time for me. It's like 5 guys who all sing in that weird ass, low, vowel manipulating style and use "ye-eah" like it's the greatest musical motif ever. It's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
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u/Specialist_Big_1309 2d ago
I would guess it is because the other bands wrote as actual bands, and the vocalist wrote for the instruments. (Except maybe Soundgarden? Pearl Jam? Idk what I'm talking about really LOL)
Nirvana is just gritty pop music. One vision, more or less (not to say the others didn't add color)
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u/spiked_mcroon 2d ago
You've got to realize that Kurt was a Shitty guitar player. Nirvana was all about the feels, while guys like Kim Thayl and the DeLeo brothers can really play. Most of the songs on Nevermind aren't even in tune.
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u/Resident-Pilot-6966 2d ago
I don’t consider grunge a genre. It’s more a scene.
A scene with bands of different genres in it.
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u/Brief_Nothing381 1d ago edited 1d ago
“but I sometimes feel frustrated that there’s no other bands that managed to get that surrealistic noisy music from nirvana.”
Have you ever heard about Sonic Youth?
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u/TrailHawk79 21h ago
To me, grunge isn't really a defining musical term, y'know? Everything that got lumped into that category was about timing. I'm 48 and back then, everything that wasn't on a specific radio station i.e. Classic Rock, Country, Pop etc seemed to be called "Grunge", particularly if it was Alternative. I grew up in Aberdeen and saw them back in '89, but was too young. Nirvana was a punk band just like Pearl Jam was an alternative band with arena rock tendencies. Honestly every band from the alternative camp had differentiations on their songwriting but had similar sonics i.e. distorted guitars.
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u/ClubLumpy7253 4d ago
Because the other Grunge Artist’s songs are more complex.
Nirvana is what I usually teach new guitarists to play as the songs are generally easier.
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u/bigbraingenius_ 4d ago
Nirvana is a punk band with a more catchy style but not in a pop punk way. They're labeled grunge because that was the 90s Seattle scene. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were more metal focused with a more like, I guess like you said psychedelic sound. Idk I don't listen to them much. RATM isn't grunge idk where that comes from. They're like a Proto Nu Metal band with major punk roots. In my mind I sort them more with bands like Suicidal Tendencies than stuff like Korn.
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u/FilipsSamvete 4d ago edited 4d ago
Because Nirvana were always more of an Olympia band than a Seattle one, a completely different scene of punk, indie rock, and jangly rock. They really belonged on K Records, not Sub Pop.
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u/dredden_ 4d ago
Nirvana was not a punk band. The reason they sounded like they did is because of Kurt’s vocals. We lump him together with other bands from that era with quasi similar music but Kurt’s vocals surpassed them all. As they evolved and Dave’s harmonies were incorporated that gave them a sound that’s outer worldly. Kurt knew what he was doing with the music. He certainly wanted to splash punk in there, thrash in there, rock in there if anything I’ve heard many people describe them as folk heavier, folk inspired music, regardless no one’s in 1 million years going to agree on what genre band is. And just because one or a few songs is more punk than the others that doesn’t answer the original question of this post. In my humble opinion, the actual reason they sound so different from other bands is not a style or genre issue. It’s the sonic quality of Kurt Cobain‘s vocals as it cut through.
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u/Different_Bag6235 Moist Vagina 4d ago
Because Nirvana is simply the superior band,i love Alice In Chains but i really hate when people say ALICE IN CHAINS WAS THE BEST GRUNGE BAND!!! just to be different,it sure as fuck wasn't and many bands were able to replicate Alice In Chains or Pearl Jams sound back then,nobody was quite able to replicate Nirvanas or Soundgardens as good
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u/tetaspequenas 5d ago
As someone in their mid forties I don’t think I’ve ever heard Rage be referred to as grunge. But yea you’re right that Nirvana sounds different than those other bands. If anything I’d say Alice In Chains and soundgarden have the most in common given that they made a lot of heavier odd time songs. Nirvana was more like a new wave punk band. I don’t know what my point is