(Credits: Far Out / Album Covers)

There will probably never be another rock revolution that took over the world as quickly as grunge rock. The entire world seemed to be going in one direction with hair metal, and then, as soon as Kurt Cobain started dominating the charts, every other band tried their hand at making songs about their inner feelings or the horrors of the world. It’s fine for artists to go down that route, but the few times when seasoned veterans like Def Leppard tried it, you knew that there were going to be some problems.

Because when you think about it, someone giving it all up to go grunge doesn’t really make any sense. The entire ethos of the alternative movement was about trying to make something that was a bit more authentic, so how is someone who’s already an established rock god going to try to make a record on the same level?

It’s never an easy decision, but that didn’t stop artists from at least trying to get some of that Seattle money… and falling flat on their faces. Even with a few half-decent songs here and there, most of these albums feel like they are desperately trying to capture the same vibe as the Pearl Jams of the world or deliberately trying to scrub any of the cleanliness out of their sound.

When you trade it all in for grunge, though, you neuter a large part of what made you original in the first place. The style of these acts may not have been as en vogue as it was in its prime, but chances are, if it had stayed the same throughout the 1990s, nothing would have changed.

10 laughable attempts to go grunge:

10. ‘Layne’ – Staind

There’s a case that grunge ultimately did as much harm as it did good for the community. It might have been a good way to unleash anger amongst kids, but there were just as many bands that gave a net negative to the music community who wouldn’t be here without Nirvana. And on the bottom rung of the post-grunge boom was Staind, who figured they try to embrace the sound of their heroes on the tribute song ‘Layne’.

That’s not to say that their hearts weren’t in the right place. Layne Staley of Alice in Chains had just passed away, and this was meant to be a nice tribute song to the fallen icon. But here’s the one thing they forgot: Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell’s vocals are irreplaceable, and trying to make a halfhearted attempt at it is much more disrespectful.

Outside of the preschool basic rhyme scheme about Staley’s legacy, the effect Aaron Lewis has on his voice to try to match the intensity of Alice in Chains doesn’t hold up at all next to the guitar backing on the track, sounding closer to cats wrestling for control of the microphone. It’s not necessarily the worst attempt at going grunge, but for someone who left an indelible mark on music history, he frankly deserves a better sendoff than this.

9. Army of Anyone – Army of Anyone

The metalheads had a godsend in the 1990s once the industrial movement kicked in. Not liking the sounds of grunge? Don’t worry, you don’t have to as long as you have bands like Nine Inch Nails and Rob Zombie to headbang to. Then someone had the gall to ask whether both of those worlds could combine, and with Army of Anyone, there was a bit of an orange juice and toothpaste scenario going on.

That’s not to say that anyone in this band cannot make great music. Richard Patrick has been amazing under the caustic beats of Filter, and the remaining members of Stone Temple Pilots without Scott Weiland can still play their asses off. This isn’t a case of the album being phoned in…it was just an execution problem that doomed it to an early grave.

Compared to other artists who try their best to make a melding of both genres, this feels less like a passion project and more like the two styles are sitting awkwardly next to each other in the hopes that they will make some sort of spark by the end. The supergroup idea usually only works once every generation or so, and since Audioslave was on the horizon, Army of Anyone felt like a band that sounded better on paper than it did in real life.

8. My Own Prison – Creed

Once grunge dissipated, no one really knew what to do. Every generation seems to steer the next musical movement forward, but once Kurt Cobain died, there was no real path to go next. So if the leaders are gone and are now moving away from the traditional sounds of grunge, the next best thing is to just try and do the whole thing again.

If Eddie Vedder was busy making his art rock passion projects with Pearl Jam, Creed was the band for you, making the kind of metallic post-grunge with a singer that sounded like a cheap knockoff of Vedder’s style. Although the rest of the group works wonders across My Own Prison, hearing Scott Stapp warble his way through the songs sounds like he’s shooting for somewhere between hard rock and grunge and falls somewhere in this musical purgatory from which he will never escape.

The sad fact is that of all the Creed albums that do this, My Own Prison is the one that is closest to good, featuring Mark Tremonti laying down some tasty licks every now and again when Stapp is over there trying to get moody. They may have been reverent towards their idols, but this is the line here it goes past being a decent idea and verges on parody.

7. Load – Metallica

Most metal artists were being given some dirty looks by fans when they decided to embrace alternative music. If an outfit like Poison was all about their looks, why were we suddenly supposed to care when they traded their teased-out hair for some tribal-looking garb on their 1990s output? Some artists may have had mixed results regarding grunge, but it arguably made negative sense to see Metallica doing it.

I mean, you called the band Metallica at the beginning of your career, so there’s no getting around trying to sound heavy whenever you go into the studio. By the time they started working on their follow-up to The Black Album, though, James Hetfield did end up putting some of that Alice in Chains rasp in his voice, along with a guitar tone that sounded closer to hard rock than it did to metal.

While ReLoad was more of the same experimental music they had started with, the only real problem with the first instalment is that it is far too ballad-heavy, featuring songs that sound like if you had given ‘Master of Puppets’ a gallon of absinthe to drink. There’s plenty of decent stuff to parse through in Metallica’s 1990s output, but they didn’t have to make something so extravagant on such a big gamble.

6. We Like Digging? – Kara’s Flowers

There are probably a lucky few of you reading this who have never heard of a band like Kara’s Flowers. Compared to the other groups here, they were never very high profile until they changed their name to something else and became massive pop darlings in the 2000s. Don’t recognise the frontman? Well, how about if he started to sing songs like ‘She Will Be Loved’?

Yes, before Maroon 5 ever came into being, superstar Adam Levine tried his hand at making a grunge record on We Like Digging?, which is pulled off much better than it has any right to. Then again, it is ‘Maroon 5 Does Grunge’ and there’s no way for that not to be awkward, especially with Levine’s shimmering voice sounding completely out of place on the record.

Most importantly, this album should be at least commended for letting the band know that grunge wasn’t the direction for them and steering them towards something closer to pop and soft rock than anything commercial. If they hadn’t figured this out earlier, could you imagine the horrors that Levine could have done for the rock community had he convinced himself that his destiny would be the next Chris Cornell?

5. In the Life of Chris Gaines – Chris Gaines

Garth Brooks didn’t really need to move an inch out of place in the 1990s. Country music was selling by the bucketload at the time, and you couldn’t escape Brooks’s music if you travelled anywhere in the US up until the turn of the millennium. That wasn’t enough for him, though. He wanted to be a rock star too, and his new stage persona remains one of the most baffling switchups in music history.

Brooks’s voice hasn’t really changed that much in the persona of Chris Gaines, but hearing him try his hand at a new flavour of alternative rock is a lot more strange than it is interesting. After putting up record numbers in the country world, this did nothing to endear him to the rock crowd, sounding more like he was playing dress up as a moody rock star on songs like ‘Lost In You’.

Even more confusing is when he would eventually host Saturday Night Live, hosting the show as himself and referring to his persona in the third person as the special musical guest for the evening. There were no parameters around what grunge could look like, but throwing on a whig and some subtle eye makeup doesn’t make you more like Eddie Vedder as much as it makes you Robert Smith.

4. Carnival of Souls – Kiss

Kiss have always been best when they were trying to adapt to the sounds of their time. While the proper term might be ‘trend chasers’, the band’s attempts at being chameleons when it comes to their sound have at least been profitable in the past, with ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ still being one of their best-known songs. Once they decided to put the makeup back on in the late 1990s, Carnival of Souls was thrown out like an abused puppy to the shock of no one.

This is strange because this is by far the heaviest Kiss album that they ever made. Being one of the last projects with the lineup of Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick on drums and guitar, this album at least shows that they have a healthy grasp on the medium that they’re cribbing from, including the trippy riff in the middle of ‘Jungle’.

Then again, it’s hard to take the band at their word half the time on this record, with real sentimental songs like ‘I Will Be There’ undercut by the odd track that feels a bit too much like Alice in Chains’ sloppy seconds. Since they themselves weren’t exactly ready for the public to hear this, maybe this one could have stayed in the vault a little longer for them to possibly make something even better out of it.

3. Speedin’ Bullet to Heaven – Kid Cudi

There’s no rule that says someone has to be limited to just one genre. Artists should feel free to express themselves and now is as good a time as any for people to leave the genre behind altogether to make good-sounding music, no matter what it is. Kid Cudi can be considered a bit of a game-changer in that respect, but his attempt at trying to turn in a rock album is something that both rock fans and hip-hop heads still feel the scars of.

Because, make no mistake, Speedin’ Bullet to Heaven tends to be an absolute chore to sit through. Cudi has admitted to having a lot of respect for artists like Kurt Cobain, but the lion’s share of this album involves him recording guitars with little to no plot behind it while the producers presumably look on in stunned awe.

Cudi may have continued to go down the route of rock-focused music later in his career, but the occasional rock bars that he would sprinkle in are a lot more tasteful now. Then again, that’s probably because when you burn yourself this badly the first time around, you’re going to take extra precautions to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

2. Slang – Def Leppard

The entire ethos of Def Leppard tended to be the exact opposite of grunge. Where the Seattle scene was all about promoting authenticity in music, Def Leppard built songs the same way the architects built skyscrapers, with millions of voices stacked on top of each other until they had a finished product. They couldn’t return to that kind of sound in the age of Nirvana, so the band decided to throw everything at the wall and pray that something would stick on Slang.

Whereas their previous attempts at getting rootsier on songs like ‘Two Steps Behind’ were at least admirable unplugged pieces, half of this album is made up of tracks that sound like Joe Elliott is fumbling in the dark trying to find a groove. Also, since the band has relied on their amazing guitar chops, it’s also strange to hear them suddenly muted, as if the idea of shredding wouldn’t be considered hip with the kids these days anymore.

Even newcomer Vivian Campbell had to admit that the group were going in the wrong direction, later claiming that they were spending a fortune on the record and that no one would buy it. Slang might not have been a complete disaster from back to front, but it’s saying something when the next album, Euphoria, feels like a preemptive apology for what they just put their audience through.

1. Generation Swine – Mötley Crüe

If there was ever a face of hair metal, Mötley Crüe would probably be it. Van Halen may have started the movement without really knowing it, but Nikki Sixx’s determination to put together the sleaziest band on the planet made for some of the hardest songs to come out of the Sunset Strip in the 1980s. While everyone presumed that the group fizzled out just like any other hair act when their self-titled album fell on deaf ears, Sixx wouldn’t go out that easily.

After rehiring original singer Vince Neil, the band would get back into the good graces of the public with Generation Swine, which is more fascinating than it is outright bad. Outside of just grunge, they grapple with what seems like 12 different genres throughout the album with very little results, going from the traditional punk rock songs to letting Tommy Lee sing the closing ballad ‘Brandon’.

The reason why it’s on the laughable portion is because of how much of a mess it is from start to finish when they could have been doing just fine being plain old Crüe. As opposed to an artist that tries on a different sonic costume to see whether it fits, this entire album feels like a group clawing at every genre they can get their hands on in the hopes that one of them will spontaneously put them on top of the charts.

Related Topics