Part_9

By then the end of the Eighties was rapidly approaching, and metal was again becoming a jaded form of music. Every new pop and thrash metal band sounded exactly the same, and of the old ones only a few remained. Motley Crue and Guns n' Roses still ruled the music world along with Metallica, in the absence of Def Leppard and Bon Jovi. The thrash world was quickly dying as bands were repeating everything done before, and Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica had all slowed down and softened up on their approach in different degrees, which in turn propelled their sales and sent Metallica's "Black" album into an unbelievably long stay on the charts. Death and doom metal had already revived, but speed and glam needed a savior.
Pop metal didn't get it, but thrash metal certainly did, courtesy of Pantera. Pantera (originally a glam metal band) practically revolutionized thrash metal by popularizing an approach that had first been exploited and created by the (unjustly) unrecognized Exhorder. Speed wasn't the main point anymore, it was what singer Phil Anselmo called the "power groove." Riffs became unusually heavy without the need of growling or the extremely low-tuned and distorted guitars of death metal, rhythms depended more on a heavy groove, and vocals became a mixture of snarls and sharp screams, which all revived thrash for the Nineties. But pop metal was to suffer another fate: death at the hands of alternative metal.
Alternative metal had its roots on Neil Young's Crazy Horse, and even before with bands like the Ventures and the Velvet Underground, but the true innovators were Living Colour, Jane's Addiction, and Faith No More; the first an eccentric mixture of heavy metal, jazz, blues, rap, funk, hardcore, and a good dose of black culture; the second a band that borrowed heavily from the Seventies and developed its own unique sound with Perry Farrel's high-pitched squeals. As for Faith No More, its members mixed every existing type of music available to them and fused it with their second singer Mike Patton's bewildered screaming to create masterful albums, a style adopted and developed later by Scatterbrain, Mr.Bungle (Patton's side project) and Mindfunk. These bands were quite successful before the alternative metal explosion that was to occur, and obscured other bands that were stirring up a commotion, such as the hardcore-influenced Sonic Youth, the hyperkinetic Fishbone, the Irish Therapy?, and Seattle's Melvins, Tad, and Mudhoney. Of course, there was also Mother Love Bone, but the band never quite hit fame, despite its outstanding music.
Then Nirvana exploded upon the world with their song "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Its mixture of accessibly simple vocal melodies and punk angst quickly drew hordes of fans eager to listen to something new. Kurt Cobain's depressed lyrics attracted millions of Generation X teenagers who felt as if the old stars of glam metal had nothing to do with their lives; flash and sex just weren't reality anymore, or so everyone thought. Until the death of Cobain in 1994, the members of Nirvana were MTV darlings and helped impulse the so-called Seattle scene, taking away the heavy metal scene from Los Angeles. The grunge wave was so overwhelming commercially that new alternative metal bands began springing out throughout the world, eventually oversaturating the scene. Few bands remained true to their original styles; the likes of the Black Crowes and the Four Horsemen reviving the bluesier rock of the Sixties; Pride & Glory displaying a Southern-influenced rock style; and Love/Hate, the Almighty, and the intensely political and pseudo-alternative Warrior Soul remaining true to a more straightforward heavy metal style.
After the wake of Nirvana, several bands quickly attained fame status. Soundgarden kept to its tried and true formula; Alice In Chains offered a dark, broody musical landscape; and Pearl Jam, perhaps the second most important band of the alternative scene, offered intricate guitar arrangements and melodies, along with Eddie Vedder's low growls and words from the heart on its masterful debut album Ten. The alternative metal scene quickly grew as MTV gave such bands heavy video rotation and took them to stardom, while turning its back on all other forms of heavy metal after a couple of years and for no apparent reason. Later came bands like Stone Temple Pilots, which evolved from a poor man's Pearl Jam to a force of its own, the punk-turned-alternative Soul Asylum, the unique My Sister's Machine, the acclaimed Saigon Kick, Blind Melon, Big Chief, Candlebox, Dinosaur Jr., Moist, and Sponge, all with different degrees of success.
Meanwhile, progressive metal would enjoy yet another zenith among commercial circles. Images and Words, a rather complex collection of progressive-minded music delivered by Dream Theater, reached stellar sales and took progressive metal to grounds seldom tried before. Consisting of prodigious musicians, the band would also release albums such as Awake and A Change of Seasons to further broaden its musical horizon and appeal, and further establishing its reputation as one of progressive metal's most outstanding bands ever. Furthermore, in the wake of Dream Theater's success, several new bands began experimenting further with the most technically apt branch of heavy metal developed previously by the likes of the insanely technical progressive thrash act Watchtower. Threshold, Shadow Gallery, Damn the Machine, Ayreon, Symphony X, the ultra-complex Spastic Ink, and the unbelievably original Pain of Salvation are among these bright exponents of music, which continuously broaden musical frontiers. Along with these, other bands have created more whimsical approaches, like the progressive thrash metal composed by Anacrusis and the progressive combination of death metal and jazz harbored once by Atheist and Cynic.