This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Sam Dunn in Metal: A Headbanger's Journey gives a profile on this. I though it'd help to post it.
- -"Hard Alternative was a term conjured in the mid-90's and then pre-applied to the brave and creative bands pre-Grunge, during Grunge but not quite part of it, and then everything heavy but not so visually Heavy Metal the day after Grunge was considered dead. In that sense it's a catch-all, but certain rules did apply. First off, hard alternative bands were quite guitar-drenched, quite rocking, quite aggressive. Some, such as Faith No More, Jane's Addiction, Living Colour and Rage Against The Machine, were quite funky, tagged as funk metal or rap metal, and some, such as Smashing Pumpkins and Tool, were merely an extension of Grunge's possibilities, temporally into the mid-90s, but also adding new ingredients, melody and diversity for Corgan and crew, intense art rock exploration for Tool."
I found these informative:
Lordnecronus: That's some pretty good research. Thanks, Alucard.
Xaris: Grunge still isn't metal. Just because a genre has metal influence doesn't mean it is necesarilly metal. Grunge is mostly a fusion of alt rock and hardcore punk with some metal influence. The metal influence does not necessarily mean it is metal. Take nu-metal for example, while some of the bands do fall under metal, there are nu-metal bands that do not, but they are still called metal for some reason. Also, there is a difference between symphonic rock and symphonic metal. Evanescence is symphonic rock, bands like Nightwish and Epica are symphonic metal. Primus has even less in common with metal.
Alucard: I'm happy you brought it to the discussion page, since an edit war would just clutter things up.
First off, I'm not saying grunge is a form of metal, I'm saying that these bands are examples of alt-metal - they're not exclusively limited to one genre (hell, Evan's page lists them as Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly because their genre is so open-ended). They point is that these bands fall under the wide-spread umbrella of alt-metal amongst others; the major quality of the genre is that it's so open-ended that dozens of unsimilar bands could fit under its umbrella. The heaviness point is moot since the majority of thse bands are descirbed as "arguably metal", hence they stay on the page.
Like I said before, try to learn more about Alt-metal. Read every link I've posted or otherwise your argument doesn't hold water. Take a look at this wikipedia article as well
(assuming you trust them as reliable).
Xaris: OK, fair enough. Still, I don't think Evanescence and Primus should be here as even grunge has some relation to metal while those two bands have nothing related to metal in their sounds.
Alucard: I vaguely agree with you on Evan, but not Primus; they were one of the founding bands of alt-metal.
Evan's influences are mainly alternative, so the question of their heaviness is all that's left. Bring Me To Life features a short death growl, but that's all I can think of.
Xaris: Well if you can include the bloody Smashing Pumpkins, I guess Primus is fine, but yeah, Evanescence doesn't really fit.
Lordnecronus: I say leave Evanescence on the page, myself. I'm not going into whether they're metal or not; but as has been said, they're at least arguably metal (otherwise there wouldn't be debates about their metal status), and also as said before, they have lots of alt-rock influences.
And as for the Smashing Pumpkins, well, I agree that they're not a metal band, but Alucard's sources (at least one of them, anyway) states that they were/are alt-metal.
Xaris: As the page is describing more of a fusion of alt rock and hard rock, the Pumpkins, as odd as it may be, do fit. Evanescence is more of a fusion of alt rock and symphonic rock.
Lordnecronus: In all honesty, the reason I added Evanescence to the page was because they were listed on Wikipedia's list of alt-metal bands. Granted, Wikipedia isn't a totally reliable source, but it serves as an adequate guide.
Alucard: When I listen to them I mostly think of gothic rock, but the classical influences are obvious.
A rule of thumb with alt-metal: Since most alt-rock has a way of taking the rythmic or fast qualities of rock and slowing them down or re-arranging them, doing this to the already very sonic genre of metal means that there's going to be many overlaps with Hard Rock. Disturbed is probably the best example of this (one reviewer described them as "too heavy for hard rock but not heavy enough for metal"). If the band's heaviness level appears to sit in hard rock territory, they're probably alt-metal.
Confusing genre, isn't it?
Xaris: Except that Disturbed is more than heavy enough for traditional metal, which is what I consider most of their work, but yeah, things are quite confusing here.
Alucard: Yeah, Divide sounds like it could be a Pantera song and Perfect Insanity speaks for itself. Then again, most of Evan's work is heavy enough for Maiden and Preist-level metal. I say keep it.
