Alternative Metal Had to Exist (But It's Pretty Dead)

Nirvana changed everything in 1991. Not just music. They changed the fabric of society itself.

Overnight, the world would change from top to bottom. What was cool immediately became fucking stupid and people identified as burnout losers became the coolest people on Earth without even being asked their opinion about it. It was the birth of what is now known retrospectively as alternative culture. The word alternative has been drained of its meaning over the years, but it was meant to represent an alternative to the dominant way of being successful. A friendlier offshoot from punk ethics.

I know what you might think: oh, it was a fad and some sellouts tried to cash in. It’s a little more complicated than that. Alternative was not a fad, it was everything. It was how people thought. Rock was still the prevalent commercial music idiom then, so alternative rock was the first artistic manifestation of this blossoming paradigm and that inevitably lead to alternative metal sooner than later. So it happened and just like alternative rock, it just went away. You kind of had to be there to get it.

Or not. Let me break it down for you.

Before Alternative Metal, there was Alternative Rock

The world was a different place in the eighties. Everyone had a set idea of what things were and how the world should work, so there wasn’t much breathing room for, you know, ALTERNATIVE models for success. For example, the idea of a rock star was pretty much Robert Plant or Steven Tyler. A hypersexualized, womanizing arena rock frontman or a crotch-trusting guitar virtuoso like Richie Sambora or Stevie Ray Vaughn. Record executives were last to realize Kurt Cobain was a fucking supernova.

Little did these execs know, Nirvana weren't the odd band out at all. There was an entire brooding subculture of rock artists who didn’t buy into conventional sound and stardom: Fugazi, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.and even My Bloody Valentine were all on the forefront of this more thoughtful brand of rock born out of post-punk concerns. Some of them openly questioned the suffocating conformity in the music industry while others confronted it by their very existence. It was different and young people craved difference.

Listen to one Hüsker Dü song and you’re gonna hear a lot of punk rock, but you’re going to hear Barenaked Ladies too. It’s a mindfuck in retrospect.

Alternative culture was an identity crisis of some sort.

But it all culminated indeed with the mainstream explosion of Nirvana in 1991 and grunge was the closest alternative rock came to metal yet and something about the look of these guys worked out better than the hairspray-and-leather-pants arena rock uniform of the previous decade. Nirvana looked like a concerned parent’s nightmare. They were angry, apathetic and profoundly dissatisfied with rigid models of success. An entire movement of pissed off kids were ready to take it a notch further.

Rollins Band, Helmet and Faith No More

What better way to transition into actual alternative metal than to turn back the clock and talk about a band that was trying to do something completely else, but that ended up creating an abrasive hybrid of punk rock and heavy-ass rock. Truth is, Rollins Band was a forward thinking unit that embraced being weird and expansive. On their first two albums Life Time and Hard Volume featured elements of jazz, noise, post-punk and, very important, funk music. Henry Rollins always had a fondness for Black music.

So, it was inevitable that Rollins Band would eventually embrace the disheveled, downtuned brand of rock that took the world by storm through Nirvana and stomp on it harder than Cobain, Grohl and Novoselic ever could. Kurt Cobain never really cared about being hard, but Henry Rollins sure did, which was how we ended up with an album called The End Of Silence where mid-tempo funk numbers, distorted rock licks and pissed off, self-affirming poetry lived side by side in surprisingly great harmony.

Seriously, listen to the bass on that record, guys. It's such a great counterpoint to the heavy, angry whiteness of that record. It’s awesome.

There was also Helmet, born in 1989 from the ashes of an alternative rock called Band of Susans and often credited for being the inventors of alternative metal. Founder Page Hamilton incorporated dissonant guitars and groovy, distorted chunks on what was somewhat of a Sonic Youth-like template in order to create something musically not that different from Rollins Band. It was less expansive, more focused on being pissed off, but damn did it scratch the same itch or what?

Helmet were creatures of their era too. Short haired, presentable, they looked somewhat like college students, which made the anger in their music come off as even spookier and more uncomfortable. Not looking like a teenage maniac, but performing like one was one of the main charms of alternative metal. At least in the early days.

The other important forefathers were Mike Patton's Faith No More. Another metal outfit inspired by funk and Black culture at large (Patton was rapping on one song), which basically applied the alternative rock formula to metal. They created an alternative model to how the genre is supposed to sound and just like Rollins Band, they just kept incorporating stuff as they went along. If you're familiar with Mike Patton and his other band Mr. Bungle, you know what man doesn’t care about doing the same thing twice.

I mean listen to their 1997 Album of the Year and it sounds a lot more like Nirvana meets Nine inch Nails than funk. With gorgeous-ass vocals, of course.

So yeah, as alternative rockers banked on the explosion of what the term "rock" could be (thanks mostly to post-punk and shoegaze), alternative metalers fed that explosion and created a fire that wouldn't last in itself, but that would create other fires along the way.

Whatever the fuck “metal” is even supposed to mean

One thing you have to understand in this evolution is that metal became extremely popular in these years. It was the new hot thing that kids listened to in order to piss off their parents and every label wanted to sign as many of them as possible. That allowed weird and unlikely bands to get their moment in the sun. All of the bands that would follow until the next important inception point (KoRn in 1995) would stretch out the meaning of metal as much as they possibly could.

Whatever was an alternate take on the dominant model was given shitloads of money.

Nine Inch Nails and Ministry's industrial take on the genre was celebrated overnight. It still is to some degree today. White Zombie's groovy, goofy and more commercial sound became a thing and launched its charismatic frontman's career. Rage Against the Machine included rap in every of their songs and became icons become of it. They’re also considered forefathers of nü metal because of it although I believe they shirk this label. Life of Agony is often forgotten in this conversation, but were important too.

Filter is often disregarded for being a Nine Inch Nails ripoff, but they were important to the genre too. Founder Richard Patrick had an ear for robust, but catchy compositions that 90s bros listened to on repeat at the gym. His inclusion of industrial elements was also very bare.

The comparisons to Trent Reznor were valid (for obvious reasons), but overblown I think. They were descendants, not copycats.

I believe the last proper alternative metal band was Maynard James Keenan and Billy Howerdel’s A Perfect Circle, which is still alive and well as a side project for both men today. Keenan's primary band Tool could also be considered alternative in its presentation and its expansive views on prog metal, but the brooding, tormented and powerful sound of A Perfect Circle is unmistakable. It’s a throwback to this era where youth openly redefined itself and a reminder that such redefinition is always possible.

The Missing Link

Alternative metal was killed on October 11 1994 when KoRn released their debut album, but it took a little time for the body to die. That cultural and musical redefinition young people was looking forward to had reached its final form. KoRn was what pissed off young people identified to and whoever wanted to jump on the gravy train had to copy them in a way or another. The soul searching was over and it was now time to make money. The post-Kurt Cobain 1990s were a pretty cynical time in music and life in general.

I mean even Metallica tried their hand at alternative metal one year too late because they're Metallica and this is what they wanted to do.

I don't want to discount nü metal (which will get a chapter soon), but it made a lot of terrible artists rich and powerful by the virtue of being edgy. Alternative culture devolved into post-grunge, which would rebrand as butt rock in the internet age and it's overall not a very rich period in music in general. As fun and unpredictable as the early years were, it was over now that young bands had a template to follow in order to be successful. Music is a business after all.

The identity crisis was over. The same thing happened about 10 or 12 years later to indie music, which is experiencing a slower and more painful death than alternative rock and metal ever had to suffer through.

I wouldn't leave you without 5 songs to better understand the genre:

Sonic Youth - Star Power : In order to understand how metal broke free from conventions, you have to understand how rock did. Compositions are similar, but they’re distended, distorted and drenched in reverb. The influences of other genres like post-punk and shoegaze is also palpable.

Helmet - In the Meantime : A more muscular approach to alternative rock coupled with an ambivalent iconography and a melancholy of a world promised, but never delivered is what made Helmet so special. Page Hamilton used his guitar almost like a weapon and not like an instrument of virtuosity.

Filter - Hey Man Nice Shot : I love this song so much. A diamond of well-delivered rage and despondency. The passive aggressive energy of Richard Patrick’s delivery coupled with the quiet-loud-quiet dynamics popularized by Nirvana and cranked to 11 make Hey Man Nice Shot such a heartfelt bummer.

Life of Agony - River Runs Red : A groovier approach mixed with a punk straightforwardness. This could almost be qualified a groove metal if it were a little bit meaner and crunchier, but it would take some of the band's infectious catchiness off their sound. Technically they’re still together too!

A Perfect Circle - Judith : Brooding, introspective and yet still boundless and sweeping. There's a lot more than alternative in A Perfect Circle sound. It's quite proggy and operatic also, but they've never deviated from the formula over the years. It’s more accessible spin of what Tool do.

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