’90s Hard Rock Essentials

After a decade of hair bands singing about wild times and fast living, hard rock in the ’90s turned darker, heavier and meaner. This can be credited to the commercial success of a wave of bands emerging from outside the mainstream. Metallica’s bulldozing arena anthems reflect their thrash-metal roots, Nirvana’s grunge revolution delivered the angst of underground rock to MTV, Rage Against the Machine’s politically charged attacks reflected their days in the hardcore scene and Tool’s harsh nihilism grew out of the fringes of alt-metal. Outside of Guns N’ Roses, who managed to score some awfully big hits early in the decade, few veteran pop-metal acts survived these seismic shifts. It wouldn’t be until the tail end of the ’90s that a brash young MC from Detroit calling himself Kid Rock would help revive high-volume party music with his infectious mix of swaggering rock riffs and megaton hip-hop beats.