Lol! I like that. I always thought all those bands were labeled “post grunge”. That was a thing, right?
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Maybe, but it wasn’t music I was interested in so I never paid attention to any label people put on it. One of my band mate friends had a way more um… colorful term for it.
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This is a really well done vid (as are most of his vids) on this whole topic.
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Grungy
Yeah it is a thing, and all those bands are a lot closer to mainstream rock than grunge bands. Not really sure why it was ever called post grunge, but I tend to think many genre names can sound a bit ridiculous… Djent…
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I can see throwing bands into buckets but just because a band is in bucket X in now way restricts them from making songs in buckets Y or Z. For example, consider Mr. Big, Tesla, and Extreme doing their “unplugged” stuff.
Some will bucket Nickelback as being “post-grunge”—and I’m not a scholar of grunge and that might be 100% right—but to unwashed listeners, including me, that song definitely sounds indistinguishable from grunge.
Well I guess if you take “post grunge” literally, they were post grunge, but then again so is everything from then up until this point. Djent is at least an Onomatopoeia - the sound of detuning low enough for a bass through a nasally 5150, with an even more nasally ts-9 in front of it.
There are differences - some not so subtle. Also the audiences in some cases could be very different as well. A lot of this also comes down to perspective as well as the perspective of younger generations looking back on music trends of yesterday and seeing them as more homogeneous than they were.
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To me, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “How You Remind Me” are nearly interchangeable regarding their sound. Many fans would be horrified by such ignorance, but as someone than basically ignored both grunge and post-grunge, that’s my truth 
.
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Agreed, both are cool like the first 5 listens and then boring afterwards.
I like when we start calling anything with dropped tuned guitars and a certain tone djent. This is “djent” apparently…
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“Djent” is awesome and hilarious - if I remember right, Fredrik Thordendal himself came up with the word, just as an onomatopoeia for palm-muted hits on the guitar. Djents, as opposed to chugs or something. haha
But Destroy Erase Improve was a life-altering album for me, so I’ll forever be fond of whatever nonsense these guys say or do. Anyway, I bid you good evening, djentlemen.
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Yeah, agreed. I think the djent fad, like all fads, had a lot of drek in it, but Meshuggah has some brilliant stuff, and even the “first generation fadders” like Periphery have really good songwriting here and there.
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Others that came to mind:
Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country: kinda shocked by the amount of play this got, and it had a solo leading into a harmonized guitar part, which is pretty textbook “guitar heavy song”.
Orianthi - According to You: she’s obviously a pro guitarist and got producers to write her a hit.
Alterbridge - Open Your Eyes: riding on the popularity of Creed helped, and Mark always seemed to want to improve on his playing, which was obvious in this song.
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I’d thought of that one the other day…then totally forgot to post here about it. And you’re right, pretty surprising that was deemed an ok song for radio (I loved it though!!! I <3 A7x even though they seem to be the Nickelback of heavy rock)
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That was absolutely the first time a whole generation heard sweeps too cause that’s when TRL still existed.
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Wow, what an interesting song! It charted very well, and while I definitely don’t consider it very heavy, they jammed in lots of guitar! Well played, Avenged Sevenfold!
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Blockquote
Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country
Okay so we’ll all meet at the hot topic, mull around for 4 hours. Share a number 6 combo at Panda Express and then slink back and watch spike TV a bloated farting mess. That’s what that reminds me of.
So I’m gonna rant just a bit. That solo structure and the tone of it as well is the norm for modern “shred”type solo composition up to this day. chops aside it’s kind of annoying. Alright rant over.
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Actual shred is toxic to sales, regular people view it as masturbation and vastly prefer something else. However, it is interesting to see bands chart with at least some guitar.
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It wasn’t really meant to be in reference to common practice in the mainstream music industry, mostly just modern guitar shred composition in general.
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I think one thing that distinguishes grunge from rock stuff that preceded and followed is how the genre used time. This was different than hair metal that it displaced with its simple chugging and requisite guitar solo singing about girls girls girls. And its different than how you remind me.
This hair metal 80’s music format immediately sounded stale and boring - musically uninteresting and pretenttious/corny with the arrival of grunge. Suddenly you realized you had the musical taste of a 5 year old (I still do lol).
Grunge was often nasty with warbly time pushing and bending with often realistic although sometimes doomy and angry lyrics … more related to black sabbath than guitar masturbation vehicles or three chord rock.
Even a poppy song like Smells like teen spirt features a somewhat funky rap/disco beat with interesting note choices with a dreamy sad but angry and bitter vocal delivery. With an epic and overall angry feel.
This was revolutionary back them. And I think even if you liked guitar and guitar solos, this still caught your ear and made you appreciate a form even if different than music you might sometimes want to play.
Added:
Interesting video (imo) about that song:
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Oh don’t get me started on how Soundgarden and Alice in Chains (both of whom I consider to be borderline metal bands) are basically prog adjacent with shifting or unorthodox time signatures and such.
Two of my favorite examples. Both in 6/4.
Them Bones is also great I could write a dissertation on how genius Cantrell is for creating such morbid claustrophobia by doing to time what he does in that riff. Shifting from 7/8 back to 4/4 it’s like audial waterboarding.
I think stuff like this really primed the public’s ears for a band like Tool come the mid 90s.
Im really glad Beato talks about this stuff cause it’s a big reason I’ve liked the bands I’ve liked and I could never put it into words well.
Iommi could have written that one. Very Sabbathian.
Brings up a reason I don’t listen to 80s hair shred bands as much as 90s stuff. A lot of the riffs are boring. To me Thrash was the best combo. Especially from like 86-93. Pantera kept that fusion alive afterwards, killer riffs, killer solos. Then it went dormant with nu metal for a while. Here’s a great one. Simple riff but awesome and a winding solo.
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