WHAT KILLED 90s ALT-METAL? - Danzig, Primus, White Zombie, Rollins Band

I'm not really good at any of this stuff I can't hold a note I go out on stage is just a microphone and my modicum of intellect every night disco look folks here's where I went here's what I saw and here's how I feel about it what's up everybody I'm Finn McEntee this is the punk rock NBA and welcome back to my what killed the genre series where I talk about genres that have fallen off in terms of commercial popularity and I try to figure out what happened and today I'm going to be talking about the whole like 90s alt metal thing all those bands that weren't really like straight death metal or thrash metal but also weren't really grunge weren't really Punk weren't really like college rock bands like helmet Rollins band Fear Factory bands that sound like this or this [Music] basically the kind of like metal meets alternative rock bands that you saw in shows like a hundred and twenty minutes playing the Lollapalooza festivals laid the foundation for so so much of what we think of as modern metal and hardcore I'm gonna get into all of that but first I want to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video Skillshare is an online learning community for creators with more than 25,000 classes in design business and more Premium Membership gives you unlimited access so you can join the classes and communities that are just right for you and best of all there is a free two month trial for using the promo link in the description for this video if any of you are interested in design whether that's lettering or typography anything like that I would highly suggest you check out Jessica hitch's logo design masterclass Skillshare is also super affordable an annual subscription is less than ten dollars a month so if you want to get your loan on and support the channel by showing Skillshare how awesome this audience is hit that link sign up and we'll see you there also because a lot of you guys have asked for it I did make a Spotify playlist for this video you can find a link to that in the description and with that other way let's get into it part 1 setting the stage to understand why alternative metal was so fresh and cool and why it made such a big impression on me and so many other people it's important to understand the context that it came from and yes I am aware that there was lots of other cool stuff happening in the underground but basically there were two flavors of metal at the time as far as the mainstream was concerned the first flavor was the tail end of the hair metal era Guns N'Roses poison Motley Crue warrant all that stuff and this was seen as the kind of stuff that basically party girls listen to sort of the equivalent of maybe Vegas EDM now and the other flavor of metal at the time was the thrash scene dominated of course by the big four Metallica Megadeth anthrax and Slayer and this was before the Black Album came out so although those bands were definitely big Metallica was still not really a mainstream band and remember this was just a couple years after the satanic panic of the mid 80s with the Judas Priest trial and all that stuff so all these bands were still perceived as kind of scary like this is what the burnouts listen to the bad kids the guys with long hair and a bad attitude who would go skip school too behind 7-eleven and as for Punk well it was a little bit stalled out most of the big bands of the 80s like Black Flag Dead Kennedys suicidal tendencies discharged GBH all that stuff they'd either broken up or turned into really bad hard rock or metal bands punk died in 1984 was like the accepted narrative among a lot of people at the time and again I'm not saying that any of that stuff is like the objective truth I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that but my point is that's what the perception was back in 1989 as far as the state of the union of metal and Punk and as for me well like I said I was really young and I didn't really quite know what to think of it I was discovering descendents suicidal tendencies and the Sex Pistols at the time and I thought some of the thrash bands sounded kind of cool but the whole like demons and wizards kind of imagery just that was corny to me even as a 12 year old that was into D&D so that's kind of where things were at in terms of punk and metal at the end of the 80s but some things were happening they were about to change the face of metal forever and breathe new life into the genre these guys have been selling out stadiums all over America which brings me to part two metal goes to college from roughly 1989 to 1991 in parallel to everything I talked about a minute ago the quote/unquote alternative rock scene was also blowing up or as some people call that back then college rock I always thought that was kind of a stupid name but that's bands like REM the b-52s The Cure all these bands that have gone from the indie circuit to like giant chart-topping mainstream success their star was rising as Punk and metal stars kind of fell and for the record I personally hated all this stuff and still do well except for the b-52s who I love because I was just a pissed-off little kid and I just wanted to hear hardcore you know I just wanted to hear the Circle Jerks of the accused and all that alternative rock college rock stuff was just really boring and wimpy to me and as much as I dislike that stuff I do have to admit that it was indirectly responsible for creating some of my favorite music of all time by spawning what I'm calling alt metal and what I mean by that is the fusion of punk alternative rock and metal that really define to the early to mid 90s for me in the first incarnation of alt metal was the short-lived and in hindsight actually really cringey funk metal craze that happened in like 1988 to 1990 or so the biggest names in funk metal would obviously be Red Hot Chili Peppers who at the time were still kind of Punk adjacent Faith No More who are now a cult band but we're really mainstream popular when epic came out and also Living Color who are really really underrated definitely check them out if you're into like fusion II kind of metal [Music] but there were tons of other metal bands adding slap bass or maybe a DJ my favorite example of peak funk metal being a band called Mordred [Music] not good however the stuff was really interesting to me because it was still firmly rooted in Punk and metal but it was also like weird and quirky and I guess for lack of a better word a little artsy like alternative rock listening to this stuff now I think it's pretty awful and I've never choose to listen to it but to a twelve-year-old in 1990 it was mind-blowing I loved all this stuff and I will admit I even learned a little bit of slap bass that is how much I loved funk metal so that was sort of the beginnings of alt metal but the thing that really really kicked off alt metal in my opinion was the Lollapalooza tour or festival whatever you want to call it it was Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell who dreamed up the Lollapalooza tour package of acts whose only common characteristics are intensity and attitude it has had a few different revivals over the years that were kind of underwhelming but I really can't say enough about how groundbreaking Lollapalooza was when it came out I went to one I'm pretty sure that it was the first one back in 1991 I think I was in eighth grade and the lineup was Jane's Addiction Rollins band ice-t and body count Siouxsie Sioux butthole surfers living color and Nine Inch Nails that is a pretty damn good lineup right in in addition to the band they had a whole like assortment of basically sideshow stuff like circus freaks dead the Jim Rose show there if you're familiar with that that vendors artists booths for all these like social and political causes it brought together like punk and metal and goth and alternative rock and all kinds of other weird [ __ ] under like one umbrella and like so many other things it seems super obvious in hindsight but it wasn't it felt like super fresh and relevant and new at the time and if I had to point to like one event one thing that planted the seed that grew into the alt metal movement of the next half decade it would be Lollapalooza if the opening date is anything to go by Lollapalooza could be the of the summer in the next two key events were Metallica's Black Album which came out in 1991 and as you probably know was just [ __ ] gigantic everybody was into this album even normies that didn't listen Metallica before I felt like that album made metal relevant in the mainstream in a way that it wasn't before in the next year in 1992 Nirvana's Nevermind came out and you've heard this story a million times but it really did change Rock overnight suddenly the rules were different now it was cool to play loud angry guitar music but also be thoughtful and introspective and really that's what alt metal was all about so voila Palooza planted the seed for alt metal Nirvana and Metallica came along and watered it gave it some Sun and helped to grow into a like a big giant oak tree or whatever in hell do you want to use and that brings me to part three the Golden Ears from roughly 1992 to 1994 looking back this was actually a insanely [ __ ] cool time for heavy music there were just so many great bands and great albums that came out over the span of just a few years that it's kind of hard for me to believe and yes of course there are plenty of lame bands too but this little slice and time probably has the highest percentage of like truly great bands of any other era that I can think of just an amazingly strong batting average there's way way more bands that I could possibly mention here but if I had to narrow it down to like my big five albums that you should check out here's what they are the end of silence by the Rollins band to Express [Music] got deeper inside Henry Rowland's isn't the best singer but goddamnit his band for great musicians and this is in my opinion their best album just really cool tight progressive jazzy rock lasts Exorcist oh by White Zombie they got big off their next album but I actually prefer this one it's much less straightforward much weirder probably objectively not as good but I personally loved it ugly buy life of agony [Music] I know it's cooler to like river runs red but ugly is one of my personal favorite albums of all time so much groove tons of melody and some of the most just emotionally heavy lyrics you'll ever hear especially knowing what we do now about Mina and what she was probably going through at the time d manufactured by Fear Factory and this one just comes down to three words the [ __ ] riffs when it comes to just savage JunJun type riffing Dino is right up there with Dimebag as far as I'm concerned and this album is just pure riff heaven and Betty by helmet well [Music] the vocals are a little bit rough but helmet really pioneered the syncopated groove kind of thing that you have heard all over metal and hardcore afterwards and honestly I would listen to them just for their drummer Johnston ear who is absolutely brilliant nothing super flashy just like really hard-hitting super groovy stuff like I said I can't possibly cover every band but here's kind of like an overview with the big flavors of alt metal that we're going on back then by the way all the bands that I'm talking about here are on the Spotify playlist as well as a bunch of other stuff that I didn't mention so if you're interested in that there's a link in the description first of all the industrial metal bands who ironically had some of the heaviest riffing of the era Fear Factory ministry later white zombie Nine Inch Nails God flash and prong [Music] and second the like gothy horror bands kind of lumping these bands all together here which is maybe a little bit sloppy but really I'm just talking about all the bands whose imagery revolves around like monsters or vampires or anything like that because there were kind of a lot of those bands the big ones being Danzig Type O Negative White Zombie and GWAR [Music] and the whole like amphetamine reptile thing or some people called it back then noise core helmet was the breakout band of this scene unseen was another big one but my personal favorite in this particular like sub sub-genre is today is the day just a really [ __ ] strange genuinely unhinged band and then there was the post-hardcore bands I talked about this a little bit in my New York hardcore video ton of the bigger and better hardcore bands of the 80's broke up and started new like post hardcore rock metal kind of bands [Applause] Rage Against the Machine obviously being the biggest band in the kind of post-hardcore thing but also check out quicksand sieve into another and orange nine millimeter and then there's I guess what you would call the alt prog bands basically the bands who can play their [ __ ] asses off but weren't like total ponytail material playing to the weirdo fusion people the biggest one at the time I think was probably Primus but then of course he had to land fection screws and a few other bands and lastly the groove metal are like groove core kind of bands [Music] this became its own whole genre a few years later but I think this was the beginning of it Pantera obviously the biggest name but you also have biohazard machinehead and crowbar among other bands anyway I could keep going on forever there are seriously just so many great [ __ ] albums that came out during this era check out the Spotify playlist at the link in the description for all the bands that I just mentioned in a bunch more that I couldn't mention but that said this couldn't last forever like all good things that had to end but before I talk about the decline let me just take a quick detour that brings me to part three why it worked I see this era is the perfect storm it was great bands coming together at the right time and culture coupled with a media ecosystem that promoted the [ __ ] out of them and enabled them to have like true mainstream success but let me break it down and get a little bit more specific since that's what I like to do first of all remember that timing matters a lot in terms of getting traction for anything whether that's a product or art or anything else and this happened at the exact right time like I said angry guitar music was mainstream thanks to Metallica and Nirvana and we're also coming off of the uptight conservative 80s so I think people were kind of ready for some weird [ __ ] to happen in music and alt medaled was exactly what they were looking for it was super fresh different and experimental just wildly different from anything people had heard before it was a perfect mix of like punk and rock and metal that spoke to like every angsty rebellious teenager in America and it also sounded great because remember these were mostly major label bands with you know relatively big budgets in what was arguably the peak of analog music production I mean to this day a lot of people including me will hold up the Black Album as the best metal or rock mix of all time and so because of that this stuff sounded just so so much better than 80s metal that it was just insane like listen to this [Music] compared to this and also these bands were just dripping in star power like I talked about in my last video I didn't realize it at the time but these bands had a ton of super charismatic frontman Danzig Rollins Rob Zombie Pete steel Evan from biohazard these were all like super charismatic good-looking dudes so it's no wonder that Nate became popular and is proof of that remember that Henry Rollins was in Gap and Apple ads back in the day and Evan from biohazard ended up on that HBO show oz that doesn't happen too ugly unlikable dudes it's self-defense and lastly the media ecosystem that supported and promoted them I would say this was like the peak of mainstream media and there were tons of platforms that promoted all these bands extremely well MTV was easily the biggest one they had a whole bunch of shows that kind of touched on the alt metal scene beavis and butt-head was a big one headbangers ball one hundred and twenty minutes and this short-lived show called super rock print media was also a big deal back then and they back to alt metal pretty hard I would say in particular Spin Magazine which I think is no longer published but it was kind of the AP of its time but this stuff I've also got a fair amount of coverage in Rolling Stone and actually even in some of the teen magazines at the time like I remember there was this kind of what girls magazine called sassy that would write about these bands pretty often before the buzz before the fans before the fame they all journeyed to one nation with nothing but their boots and a dream so to me this was just one of those moments for the stars aligned and a spark turns into a flame like if any of the ingredients I just talked about wasn't there it probably would have stayed an underground thing like so many other cool scenes did but because the stars aligned boom and boom goes the dynamite that brings me to part for the decline now in this case nothing dramatic happened like there was no overnight changing of the gaurd like when hair metal died at the hands of Nirvana it just kind of silently stepped into the background I think the first blow was new metal like when Korn Deftones and then limp Biskit and all the other bands came out like 94 95 96 I think that's siphoned off a lot of the like more aggro dudes who were into alt metal because they heard there was this thing called the mosh pit where you can hit people without getting in trouble and then a few years later on the back of Green Day and the offsprings massive success you had pop punk and I think they kind of captured the attention of the less aggro less sad kids who weren't that [ __ ] up they just kind of wanted to have fun and we're really angry at the world or anything like that so there was no like extinction event like there were for some of these other genres and a lot of the bands are actually maybe even most of the bands are still around and still have a ton of respect and a dedicated following [Music] which brings me to part 5 the legacy like I said earlier it's actually kind of amazing if you step back and look at how many of the bands from this relatively short era ended up being like actual legit legends not like how people call some obscure band with like one cult album legends I mean like actual actual legends Nine Inch Nails Rage Against the Machine Henry Rollins Danzig Rob Zombie Toole just had a number-one album this week like these are all bands from that cohort and I don't know what you think but to me that is a pretty [ __ ] high batting average to have that many like game-changing legends or merge out of such a relatively small cohort of bands that's pretty amazing to me and as for the rest of the bands the ones who maybe didn't quite make it to that level well a lot of them are still around and maybe they're not playing to the crowds they did in 1992 or 1993 but they're still out there doing their thing and making a living off of it bran guar Fear Factory ministry to just name a few examples and to me it says a lot about how good this cohort of bands was that really very few of them like fell off the cliff and started to suck like maybe their later albums aren't quite as good as their early ones but they're not bad by any means and some of them are actually pretty damn good like Helmut's comeback album from like 2004 or 2005 it's one of their better albums [Music] [Applause] but more than anything I think the alt metal bands legacy is the massive massive influence they had on this like entire generation of metal metalcore and hardcore especially the kind of groove and like post thrash riffing that is just absolutely everywhere in heavy music now like I said earlier it was definitely not cool for hardcore kids to like Danzig or Fear Factory back then but fortunately that is no longer true these bands are now finally getting the respect that they always deserved in hardcore like I remember a few years ago on hardcore when it seemed like every new band was citing crowbar life of agony and Type O Negative as influences I mean listen to a band like twitching tongues and they would have fit right in on headbangers ball in 1993 [Music] or even listen to like a new band like harm's way or Code Orange [Music] those industrial elements are like ripped straight out of the Nine Inch Nails ministry prong kind of playbook so nothing lasts forever but as far as I'm concerned this little cohort of bands did pretty [ __ ] well for themselves in just a few years I think they completely revitalized metal and breathe new life into the genre I think they turned it into what it is today and I'm grateful that I was there to see it all right everybody that's it for what killed 90s alt metal let me know what you think in the comments were you around for this stuff or are you younger and listening to this stuff now what do you think of it does it hold up do you like it as much as I do or am I just a delusional old man viewing this stuff through nostalgic rose-colored glasses and actually it sucks let me know what you think in the comments I also want to thank everybody who sports me on patreon at the true cult level or above and those people are Andy B Anthony see amber G be sacrilegious cloudy and K our end of may Geoff W John ariana.sea Jordan H just an H Luc s Michael be militant mean Nicholas G Richie H Ridley H Ryan w6 dou you and at the quiet canvas you guys are true cult fans I appreciate your support very very much if you would like to support me on patreon there's a link to that in the description patrons get access to a private discord server audio podcast feed of all the videos bunch of other stuff so if you're interested in that hit that link in the description I'm gonna sign up for now but I will see you next time

Channel: The Punk Rock MBA

Views: 731,930

Keywords: finn mckenty, punk rock mba, music industry, marketing for bands, alternative rock, alternative metal, industrial metal, danzig, rollins band, henry rollins, white zombie, rob zombie, what killed 90s alt metal, funk metal, janes addiction, lollapalooza 1991, helmet in the meantime, rage against the machine, primus, type o negative, faith no more, red hot chili peppers, the b52s, the cure, college rock, thrash metal, 90s metal

Id: iaVrrQB7GTQ

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 19 2019