10 post-grunge albums that are actually worth listening to
There might never be a single musical movement as important to rock and roll as grunge. Even though the movement only lasted about three years in the spotlight, it was extremely important for the genre as a whole, wiping the slate clean of every single fake rock band on the block at the time and paving the way for something a bit more organic to come to the surface from Pearl Jam and Nirvana.
Like anything else in rock and roll, though, there will always be labels that want a hundred more of the one successful thing. Although bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana may have been the heavy hitters, a funny thing started to happen in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death, with wannabes popping up left and right with the same gritty vocal delivery and wanting to write about their inner feelings.
Nine times out of ten, post-grunge artists tended to feel like the absolute bottom of the barrel, but there was actually some good music in there. From industry veterans still going strong in the next generation to fresh faces co-opting the yarling vocal register effectively, each act gave fans a natural progression from what Seattle started.
Despite being pretty much dead after 1994, these albums gave us another side of what grunge was capable of, either going in a different direction or building on the foundation that the initial Seattle gods set. It might seem more than a little bit derivative, but there’s no shame in wearing one’s influences on their sleeves if they have tunes to back it up.
10 underrated post-grunge albums:
10. Come Whatever May – Stone Sour
If grunge had died back in 1994, no one would have any right to make that same kind of music almost a decade later. A lot had happened since Kurt Cobain’s passing, and some of the biggest bands in the world were either scrambling to go somewhere else or fading into obscurity like the rest of the scene. Corey Taylor didn’t have anything to prove, though, and his side hustle pumped out one of the better projects of this grunge era.
Then again, Come Whatever May isn’t the kind of post-grunge album in the truest sense. There’s some leftover aggression from Taylor’s time in Slipknot, but the approach is a lot more nuanced, almost like an extension of what acts like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden did back in the day. While Taylor is definitely in hard rock mode for the most part, some of the best moments are when he tones things down, like on ‘Zzyzzx Rd’, almost like we’re getting a peek at what Slipknot was going to get up to later when they released ‘Snuff’.
On songs like ‘Through Glass’, Taylor also has some frustration to get off his chest, calling out the phoniness that he sees coming from MTV and how artificial the industry has become. This might not be the post-grunge everyone thinks of, but it certainly has the mindset and irony of a grunge record.
9. Dizzy Up the Girl – The Goo Goo Dolls
Most of the post-grunge bands were looking to tone things down after 1994. The disenchanted vibes coming off of Seattle’s finest became a bit too real, and it was time to scale things back and mellow out a little bit. Though some bands fell into the adult alternative category, The Goo Goo Dolls still had their hearts in rock and roll on Dizzy Up the Girl.
If someone saw this next to traditional albums by Gin Blossoms, though, they probably wouldn’t bat an eye. Outside of the song ‘Iris’, this is a decent set of pop-rock tunes, with John Rzeznik trading between Robbie Takac on half the record. Rzeznik might be known as the leader of the band, but Takac’s chops on songs like ‘January Friend’ have a bit of a cynical streak, as if he knows that his connections at this stage in life aren’t going to last forever.
This is still a grunge album, though, and that means depressing subject matter, with ‘Slide’ telling the story of a girl deciding whether or not to have an abortion and ‘Black Balloon’ being a symbol for drug use, depression, or both depending on the section of the song. The Goo Goo Dolls might get points these days as every mom’s favourite band back in the day, but sometimes moms have some pretty decent taste.
8. Blackbird – Alter Bridge
For most fans of post-grunge, Creed was the moment where everything jumped the shark. Fans might have tolerated Eddie Vedder’s voice on Pearl Jam, but hearing Scott Stapp crank out the same schtick on songs like ‘My Sacrifice’ and ‘With Arms Wide Open’ has been mocked for a damn good reason. Once the guys decided to call things off, things got a lot more interesting when Myles Kennedy entered the fold.
Although Alter Bridge took things in a much heavier direction, Blackbird is the most indebted to the band’s roots, being equal parts metal and grunge across the tracklist. Going through each song, there’s more focus on musicianship, like Mark Tremonti’s face-melting licks on ‘Come to Life’ and ‘Ties That Bind’ or toning things down for something more mellow on the title track.
Outside of the licks, Kennedy’s voice shifted the game, having hard rock bombast in his delivery that one would normally expect out of someone like Axl Rose, with some parts of the songs even reaching into Led Zeppelin territory with how intense they can be. Creed has its place in music history, but Blackbird was where fans saw what this band could do.
7. Days of the New – Days of the New
It’s not easy to replicate the grunge sound on an acoustic guitar. Even though the greatest acts from Seattle had their moments on MTV Unplugged, no one will get the same effect hearing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on an acoustic. Grunge was also all about angst, and Travis Meeks packed more punch into his acoustic than most grunge bands could muster.
While Days of the New came out during rock’s transition, their debut bridged the gap between both ends of the rock scene, having just as many quiet moments as they did explosive ones on this record. Even though ‘Touch Peel and Stand’ might be the most celebrated song from this record, the deep tracks are where Meeks goes for the throat, capturing the feeling of frustration and boiling over perfectly in song.
The unplugged atmosphere may take a bit of getting used to for some fans, but once they peel back the layers of what the band is doing, the parts almost hypnotise the listener, leaving them dazed once they come to the end of some of the longer cuts. While Days of the New might not have been able to capture the same kind of intensity again, the more sombre moments from acts like Nickelback are a poor man’s attempt at what Meeks was doing without trying. Not bad for a kid who was barely out of his teens.
6. Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam
Of all the titans of grunge rock, Pearl Jam is one of the few left standing. The honeymoon period did get a bit strange, though, with Eddie Vedder wanting nothing to do with fame and the band going in strange directions throughout the 2000s. After they got back on track, the Avocado Album felt like a soft reboot of what PJ was known for.
Although the last few records had dealt with the political frustration happening in America, this album has its teeth out a lot more, making their voices heard and not willing to back down from the war that President Bush was forcing down their throats. While there’s no set plotline to the record, each of the songs feels like their own separate vignette of what life in America was like, from the frustration of ‘World Wide Suicide’ to missing loved ones that are fighting half a world away on ‘Come Back’ to feeling like they’re being pushed around in every single direction on ‘Comatose’.
There was even a loose discussion by the band to turn this into a concept album centred around a man going off to fight in the war and getting disillusioned once he returns. Though Vedder never got to realise his Pete Townshend-esque vision for the record, this was the first time in a while that grunge actually felt like it had the power to change the world.
5. Yourself Or Someone Like You – Matchbox 20
Towards the end of the ‘90s, grunge had become everything that the original bands had despised. Instead of the wild songs from Mudhoney and The Melvins, bands like Bush were coming out of the woodwork to make the discount version of what Nirvana had cashed in on. Grunge was starting to look like another pop fad, but the pop side of the conversation had its moments.
Because Matchbox 20 will never be called heavy by any stretch of the imagination. Outside of their soft rock approach, Yourself or Someone Like You is one of the finest examples of post-grunge, taking the tuneful side of Pearl Jam and Nirvana and putting some real angst between it. Even though Rob Thomas’s voice might sound a little too much like Eddie Vedder on songs like ‘Real World’, there’s some genuine heart behind a lot of his tunes, from worrying about a relationship that’s crumbling down on ‘3AM’ to the struggle to hang on to your emotions on ‘Push’.
Compared to the more abrasive sounds of grunge, this record can please both sides of the aisle, having the hooks when it needs to but never being afraid to get introspective. In a world full of emotionally complex bands, there’s nothing wrong with alt-rockers that fans could take home to their mom.
4. Audioslave – Audioslave
There were a lot of questions after Soundgarden broke up. These guys had been in the trenches of grunge at the beginning, and their breakup seemed to close the door on the authentic side of the genre. After Chris Cornell tried to be a solo star, he found his second calling by making some of the best rock and roll he knew how.
Working with the former members of Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave’s debut is the kind of record that felt like it was pulled straight out of the ‘70s. Since the original grunge bands were always a bit cagey about showing their arena rock influences, this record is a celebration of the kind of music that made them fans of rock, to begin with, like the sleek sounds of ‘I Am The Highway’.
There are more than a few moments where everyone explores unchartered territory, like Cornell flexing his soulful chops on ‘Like a Stone’ as Tom Morello breaks out his whammy pedal once again. When it comes to songs like ‘Cochise’ though, there isn’t one ironic bone in their body, looking to throw caution to the wind and kick some ass just like their heroes did. The grunge era may have been about rock stars that didn’t like the fame, but this is the kind of excessive rock and roll that Led Zeppelin would have approved of.
3. Fantastic Planet – Failure
Grunge always prided itself on being from the underground. As much as alternative rock gets thrown around today, the whole point was to be an alternate version of what the pop charts gave fans day in and day out. When the original grunge bands fell, the way forward was to innovate all over again.
Although Failure had been a part of the grunge sound on their first handful of records, Fantastic Planet gave fans something they hadn’t heard before, blending the sounds of grunge with the futuristic sounds of space rock. When listening to songs like ‘Stuck On You’, a certain new age sound isn’t present in acts like Alice in Chains, looking to make something that made fans scratch their head while they were headbanging. Outside of the effects, Ken Andrews’ knack for songwriting makes listeners pay attention, having a mix between classic rock sensibilities and the kind of DIY aesthetic that comes with being in a grunge band.
While some bands just hid behind a bunch of fuzz, Ken did his homework on his favourite acts, combining the sounds of everyone from Nirvana to Sonic Youth to even dashes of what Radiohead was doing at the time. Whereas most post-grunge bands were content to live in the past, Fantastic Planet was the one grunge album that felt like the future of rock and roll.
2. Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Giftshop – Stone Temple Pilots
The world of alternative rock looked a lot different once 1995 hit. The end of grunge ended with a bit of a whimper, and bands either didn’t have the heart to continue or were too burnt out by the industry to want to play depressing music anymore. Since Stone Temple Pilots were never known as any Seattlites’ favourite band, their transition out of grunge was a lot more seamless.
Coming out of their last album Purple, Tiny Music is the kind of left turn that no one expected, with the band trying on influences from glam rock and Scott Weiland perfecting his David Bowie-meets-T-Rex, moves. This is about as far away from grunge as possible…so why does it work so well? Even though the band still have the distortion cranked on this record, the pop songs are where things get interesting, creating the grunge equivalent of a hair metal ballad on ‘Lady Picture Show’ and borrowing from funk and jazz on ‘Trippin on a Hole In a Paper Heart’.
This was not what grunge rockers were supposed to do, but that was exactly the point. The mission statement of grunge was always about not having rules, and the most alternative thing STP could have done was make a record with a bit of polish.
1. The Colour and the Shape – Foo Fighters
After Kurt Cobain’s death, Dave Grohl wasn’t about to spend the rest of his life mourning his best friend. Once he dusted himself off, Grohl went into the studio by himself and started making music for the hell of it, making him jump for what would eventually become Foo Fighters. If the debut record was the band’s birth, though, The Colour and the Shape is where he knew they had a future.
Since most of the first record was made from songs Grohl had stockpiled for years during Nirvana, this leaves all of that darkness in the dust, as he writes songs that were made for the arena like ‘My Hero’ and ‘Monkey Wrench’. Although the production for this record cost them drummer William Goldsmith, Grohl had a clear vision for what his songs were going to be, crafting tunes that had a good mix of humour on ‘See You’, melodrama on ‘February Stars’, and intensity on ‘My Poor Brain’.
For all of the empty grunge bands, this was the first time a group sounded modern outside of the malaise of the Seattle sound. The entire rock scene was looking for something that took the edge off of grunge’s sudden loss, but if Dave Grohl could soldier on with an album like this, then everyone else could too.
