Proto-grunge:1965–1985 has been called the "Godfather of Grunge". His albums
Rust Never Sleeps and
Ragged Glory have been described as proto-grunge and grunge. The term proto-grunge has been used to describe artists as having elements of grunge well before the genre appeared in the mid- to late-1980s. Perhaps the earliest proto-grunge album is
Here Are the Sonics, released in 1965 by
the Sonics.
Neil Young's albums
Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and
Ragged Glory (1990) have been proclaimed examples of proto-grunge and grunge music. Additionally, he has been cited as an influence by
Pearl Jam, which led to them backing Young for the
Mirror Ball album, released in 1995. Other acts described as proto-grunge include
Wipers and their album
Youth of America (1981),
Elvis Costello and his
Blood & Chocolate album which
Will Birch hailed as "6 or 8 years ahead of its time" (1986), and
the Stooges and their album
Fun House (1970). Grunge's sound partly resulted from
Seattle's isolation from other music scenes. As Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman noted, "Seattle was a perfect example of a secondary city with an active music scene that was completely ignored by an American media fixated on Los Angeles and New York [City]." Mark Arm claimed that the isolation meant, "this one corner of the map was being really inbred and ripping off each other's ideas". Seattle "was a remote and provincial city" in the 1980s; Bruce Pavitt states that the city was "very working class", a place of deprivation, and so the scene's "whole aesthetic – work clothes, thriftstore truckers' hats, pawnshop guitars" was not just a style, it was done because Seattle "was very poor." Indeed, when "
Nevermind reached number one in the U.S. charts, Cobain was living in a car." However, some critics have noted that in spite of the U-Men's canonical place as original grunge progenitors, that their sound was less indebted to heavy metal and much more akin to However the idiosyncrasy of the band may have been the bigger inspiration, more than the aesthetics themselves. Soon Seattle had a growing and "varied music scene" and "diverse urban personality" expressed by local "
post-punk garage bands". Roy Shuker states that grunge's success built on the "foundations... laid throughout the 1980s by earlier
alternative music scenes." Shuker states that music critics "...emphasized the perceived purity and authenticity of the Seattle scene. Nirvana introduced into the Seattle scene the noise-inflected influences of
Scratch Acid and the
Butthole Surfers. Several Australian bands, including
the Scientists,
Cosmic Psychos and
Feedtime, are cited as precursors to grunge, their music influencing the Seattle scene through the college radio broadcasts of Sub Pop founder Jonathan Poneman and members of Mudhoney on
KCMU. The influence of Pixies on Nirvana was noted by
Kurt Cobain, who commented in a
Rolling Stone interview, "I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard." In August 1997, in an interview with
Guitar World,
Dave Grohl said: "From Kurt,
Krist [Novoselic] and I liking
the Knack,
Bay City Rollers,
Beatles and
Abba just as much as we liked
Flipper and
Black Flag... You listen to any Pixies record and it's all over there. Or even
Black Sabbath's "
War Pigs"—it's there: the power of the dynamic. We just sort of abused it with
pop songs and got sick with it." Aside from the genre's punk and alternative rock roots, many grunge bands were equally influenced by heavy metal of the early 1970s.
Clinton Heylin, author of ''Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge'', cited Black Sabbath as "perhaps the most ubiquitous pre-punk influence on the northwest scene". Black Sabbath played a role in shaping the grunge sound, through their own records and the records they inspired. Musicologist
Bob Gulla asserted that Black Sabbath's sound "shows up in virtually all of grunge's most popular bands, including
Nirvana,
Soundgarden, and
Alice in Chains". Black Sabbath's 1971 album
Master of Reality in particular has been noted as a key influence on grunge, largely in part due to the sound, as a result of guitarist
Tony Iommi down-tuning his guitar a step and a half. The influence of
Led Zeppelin is also evident, particularly in the work of Soundgarden, whom
Q magazine noted were "in thrall to '70s rock, but contemptuous of the genre's overt sexism and machismo". Jon Wiederhorn of
Guitar World wrote: "So what exactly is grunge?... Picture a supergroup made up of
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath and
the Stooges, and you're pretty close." Catherine Strong stated that grunge's strongest metal influence was
thrash metal, which had a tradition of "equality with the audience", based on the notion that "anyone could start a band" (a way of thinking also shared by US
hardcore punk, which Strong also cites as an influence on grunge) which was also taken up by grunge bands. Turner explained grunge's integration of metal influences, noting, "Hard rock and metal was never that much of an enemy of punk like it was for other scenes. Here, it was like, 'There's only twenty people here, you can't really find a group to hate.'" Charles R. Cross stated that grunge was the "culmination of twenty years of
punk rock" development. A similarly influential yet often overlooked album is
Neurotica by
Redd Kross, about which Jonathan Poneman said, "
Neurotica was a life changer for me and for a lot of people in the Seattle music community." The context for the development of the Seattle grunge scene was a "golden age of failure, a time when a swath of American youth embraced the... vices of indolence and lack of motivation". Another seminal release in the development of grunge was the
Deep Six compilation, released by
C/Z Records in 1986. The record featured multiple tracks by six bands: Green River,
Soundgarden,
Melvins,
Malfunkshun,
Skin Yard, and the U-Men. For many of them it was their first appearance on record. The artists had "a mostly heavy, aggressive sound that melded the slower tempos of heavy metal with the intensity of hardcore". The recording process was low-budget; each band was given four hours of studio time. As Jack Endino recalled, "People just said, 'Well, what kind of music is this? This isn't metal, it's not punk, What is it?'... People went 'Eureka! These bands all have something in common.'" Sub Pop's Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, inspired by other regional music scenes in music history, worked to ensure that their label projected a "Seattle sound", reinforced by a similar style of production and album packaging. While music writer
Michael Azerrad acknowledged that early grunge bands like Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and Tad had disparate sounds, he noted "to the objective observer, there were some distinct similarities."
, featured in The Rocket'', April 1, 1986 Early grunge concerts were sparsely attended (many by fewer than a dozen people) but Sub Pop photographer
Charles Peterson's pictures helped create the impression that such concerts were major events. Mudhoney, which was formed by former members of Green River, served as the flagship band of Sub Pop during their entire time with the label and spearheaded the Seattle grunge movement. Other record labels in the Pacific Northwest that helped promote grunge included C/Z Records,
Estrus Records, EMpTy Records and
PopLlama Records. Grunge attracted media attention in the United Kingdom after Pavitt and Poneman asked journalist
Everett True from the British magazine
Melody Maker to write an article on the local music scene. This exposure helped to make grunge known outside of the local area during the late 1980s and drew more people to local shows. Grunge's popularity in the
underground music scene was such that bands began to move to Seattle and approximate the look and sound of the original grunge bands. Mudhoney's Steve Turner said, "It was really bad. Pretend bands were popping up here, things weren't coming from where we were coming from." As a reaction, many grunge bands diversified their sound, with Nirvana and Tad in particular creating more melodic songs. Dawn Anderson of the Seattle fanzine
Backlash recalled that by 1990 many locals had tired of the hype surrounding the Seattle scene and hoped that media exposure had dissipated. Chris Dubrow from
The Guardian states that in the late 1980s, Australia's "sticky-floored... alternative pub scene" in seedy inner-city areas produced grunge bands with "raw and awkward energy" such as
the Scientists,
X,
Beasts of Bourbon,
feedtime,
Cosmic Psychos and
Lubricated Goat. Dubrow said "Cobain... admitted the Australian wave was a big influence" on his music. Grunge bands had made inroads to the musical mainstream in the late 1980s. Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label when they joined the roster of
A&M Records in 1988. Soundgarden, along with other major label signings
Alice in Chains and
Mother Love Bone, performed "okay" with their initial major label releases, according to Jack Endino. and their debut album,
Facelift, was released on August 21, 1990. The album's second single, "
Man in the Box", was released in January 1991, spent 20 weeks on the Top 20 of
Billboard's
Mainstream Rock chart and its music video received heavy rotation on MTV.
Facelift became the first album from the grunge movement to be certified gold by the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on September 11, 1991, for selling over 500,000 copies.
1991–1997: Mainstream success Peak of influence In September 1991, Nirvana released its major label debut,
Nevermind. The album was at best hoped to be a minor success on par with Sonic Youth's
Goo, which Geffen had released a year earlier. It was the release of the album's first single "
Smells Like Teen Spirit" that "marked the instigation of the grunge music phenomenon". Due to the constant airplay of the song's music video on
MTV,
Nevermind was selling 400,000 copies a week by Christmas 1991, and was certified gold on November 27, 1991. In January 1992,
Nevermind replaced
pop superstar
Michael Jackson's
Dangerous at number one on the
Billboard 200.
Nevermind was certified diamond by the RIAA in 1999. The success of
Nevermind surprised the music industry.
Nevermind not only popularized grunge, but also established "the cultural and commercial viability of alternative rock in general." Michael Azerrad asserted that
Nevermind symbolized "a sea-change in rock music" in which the
glam metal that had dominated rock music at that time fell out of favor in the face of music that was perceived as
authentic and culturally relevant. Grunge made it possible for genres thought to be of a niche audience, no matter how radical, to prove their marketability and be co-opted by the mainstream, cementing the formation of an individualist, fragmented culture. Other grunge bands subsequently replicated Nirvana's success.
Pearl Jam, which featured former
Mother Love Bone members
Jeff Ament and
Stone Gossard, had released its debut album
Ten in August 1991, a month before
Nevermind, but album sales only picked up the following year. By the second half of 1992
Ten had become a breakthrough success, being certified gold and reaching number two on the
Billboard charts.
Ten by Pearl Jam was certified 13× platinum by the RIAA. The band Soundgarden's album
Badmotorfinger and the band Alice in Chains' album
Dirt, along with the band
Temple of the Dog's
self-titled album, a collaboration featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, were also among the 100 top selling albums of 1992. The popular breakthrough of these grunge bands prompted
Rolling Stone to nickname Seattle "the new
Liverpool". The grunge scene was the backdrop in the 1992
Cameron Crowe film
Singles. There were several small roles, performances, and cameos in the film by popular Seattle grunge bands including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. Filmed in and around Seattle in 1991, the film was not released until 1992 during the height of grunge popularity. The fashion industry marketed "grunge fashion" to consumers, charging premium prices for items such as knit ski hats and tartan shirts. Critics asserted that advertising was co-opting elements of grunge and turning it into a fad.
Entertainment Weekly commented in a 1993 article, "There hasn't been this kind of exploitation of a subculture since the media discovered hippies in the '60s". Marketers used the "grunge" concept to sell grunge air freshener, grunge hair gel and even CDs of "easy-listening music" called "grunge light". Many grunge artists were uncomfortable with their success and the resulting attention it brought. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain told Michael Azerrad, "Famous is the last thing I wanted to be." Pearl Jam also felt the burden of success, with much of the attention falling on frontman
Eddie Vedder. Nirvana's follow-up album
In Utero (1993) featured an intentionally abrasive album that Nirvana bassist
Krist Novoselic described as a "wild aggressive sound, a true alternative record". Nevertheless, upon its release in September 1993,
In Utero topped the
Billboard charts. In 1996,
In Utero was certified 5× platinum by the RIAA. Pearl Jam also continued to perform well commercially with its second album,
Vs. (1993). The album sold a record 950,378 copies in its first week of release, topped the
Billboard charts, and outperformed all other entries in the top ten that week combined. In 1993, the rock band
Candlebox released their
self-titled album, which was certified by the RIAA. In February 1994, Alice in Chains' EP,
Jar of Flies peaked at number 1 on the
Billboard 200 album chart. Soundgarden's album
Superunknown, which was also released in 1994, peaked at number 1 on the
Billboard 200 chart, and was certified 5× platinum by the RIAA. In 1995, Alice in Chains'
self-titled album became their second number 1 album on the
Billboard 200, Texas-based
Tripping Daisy and
Toadies,
Paw, and
Nickelback's debut album was considered to be grunge. Silverchair achieved mainstream success in the 1990s; the band's song "
Tomorrow" went to number 22 on the
Radio Songs chart in September 1995 and the band's debut album
Frogstomp, released in June 1995, was certified 2× platinum by the RIAA in February 1996. During this period, grunge bands that were not from Seattle were often panned by critics, who accused them of being bandwagon-jumpers; Stone Temple Pilots and
Bush in particular fell victim to this. In a January 1994
Rolling Stone poll, Stone Temple Pilots was simultaneously voted "Best New Band" by
Rolling Stone readers and "Worst New Band" by the magazine's music critics, highlighting the disparity between critics and fans. Stone Temple Pilots became very popular; their album
Core was certified 8× platinum by RIAA and their album
Purple was certified 6× platinum by the RIAA. The British post-grunge band Bush released their debut album
Sixteen Stone in 1994. In a review of their second album
Razorblade Suitcase,
Rolling Stone criticized the album and called Bush "the most successful and shameless mimics of Nirvana's music". In the book
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota,
Chuck Klosterman wrote, "Bush was a good band who just happened to signal the beginning of the end; ultimately, they would become the grunge
Warrant".
Decline in popularity and end of subculture A number of factors contributed to grunge's decline in prominence. Critics and historians do not agree on the exact point that grunge ended. Catherine Strong wrote that "at the end of 1993... grunge had become unstable, and was entering the first stages of being killed off"; she pointed out that the "scene had become so successful" and widely known that "imitators had begun to enter the field".
Paste magazine states by 1994, grunge "was fading fast", with "Pearl Jam retreating from the spotlight as fast as they could; Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and hordes of others were battling horrid drug addictions and struggling for survival." In Jason Heller's 2013 article "Did grunge really matter?", in
The A.V. Club, he stated that Nirvana's
In Utero (September 1993) was "grunge's death knell. As soon as Cobain grumbled, 'Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I'm bored and old,' it was all over." Heller states that after Cobain's death in 1994, the "hypocrisy" in the grunge of the time "became... glaring" and "idealism became embarrassing", with the result being that "grunge became the new [mainstream]
Aerosmith". Cobain's suicide "served as a catalyst for grunge's... demise", because it "deflated the energy from grunge and provided the opening for saccharine and corporate-formulated music to regain its lost footing." That same year Pearl Jam canceled its summer tour in protest of ticket vendor
Ticketmaster's unfair business practices. Pearl Jam then began a boycott of the company; however, Pearl Jam's initiative to play only at non-Ticketmaster venues effectively, with a few exceptions, prevented the band from playing shows in the United States for the next three years. In 1996, Alice in Chains gave their final performances with their ailing and estranged lead singer,
Layne Staley, who subsequently died from an overdose of cocaine and heroin in 2002. In 1996, Soundgarden and Screaming Trees released their final studio albums of the 1990s,
Down on the Upside and
Dust, respectively. Strong states that Roy Shuker and Stout have written that the "end of grunge" can be seen as being "as late as the breakup of Soundgarden in 1997". These artists were seen as lacking the underground roots of grunge and were largely influenced by what grunge had become, described by
AllMusic as "a wildly popular form of inward-looking, serious-minded hard rock". was a more commercially viable genre that tempered the distorted guitars of grunge with a studio sheen making it radio friendly. In 1995,
SPIN writer Charles Aaron stated that with grunge "spent",
pop punk in a slump,
Britpop a "giddy memory" and album-oriented rock over, the music industry turned to "Corporate[-produced] Alternative", which he calls "soundalike fake grunge" or "scrunge". Bands Aaron lists as "scrunge" groups include:
Better Than Ezra; Bush;
Collective Soul;
Garbage;
Hootie & the Blowfish;
Hum;
Silverchair;
Sponge;
Tripping Daisy;
Jennifer Trynin and
Weezer; Aaron includes the
Foo Fighters in his list, but states that
Dave Grohl avoided becoming a "scrunge fall gu[y]" by combining 1980s
hardcore punk with 1970s arena trash music in his post-Nirvana group. and Candlebox also have been largely categorized as .
Reaction by Britpop Conversely, another
rock genre,
Britpop, emerged in part as a reaction against the dominance of grunge in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the dourness of grunge, Britpop was defined by "youthful exuberance and desire for recognition". The leading Britpop bands, "
Blur and
Oasis existed as reactionary forces to [grunge's] eternal downcast glare." Britpop artists' new approach was inspired by Blur's tour of the United States in the spring of 1992.
Justine Frischmann, formerly of
Suede and leader of
Elastica (and at the time in a relationship with Damon Albarn) explained, "Damon and I felt like we were in the thick of it at that point... it occurred to us that Nirvana were out there, and people were very interested in American music, and there should be some sort of manifesto for the return of Britishness." Britpop artists were vocal about their disdain for grunge. In a 1993
NME interview,
Damon Albarn of Britpop band
Blur agreed with interviewer
John Harris' assertion that Blur was an "anti-grunge band", and said, "Well, that's good. If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge" (ironically Kurt Cobain once cited Blur as his favorite band).
Noel Gallagher of Oasis, while a fan of Nirvana, wrote music that refuted the pessimistic nature of grunge. Gallagher noted in 2006 that the 1994 Oasis single "
Live Forever" "was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die,' and I was like... 'Well, I'm not fucking having that.' As much as I fucking like him [Cobain] and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here, on
smack [heroin], fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish." In an interview during
Pinkpop Festival 2000, Oasis'
Liam Gallagher attacked Pearl Jam, who were also performing, criticizing their depressing lyrical content and writing them off as "rubbish".
Since 1997: Successors and revivals Second-wave post-grunge Following the end of the original grunge movement, post-grunge increased in popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Adam Steininger criticized the post-grunge bands' "diluted ditties filled with watered-down lyrics, all seemingly revolving around suffering through romance." Criticizing many bands that have been described as post-grunge, Steininger panned
Candlebox for their "pop-filled" sound, focus on "love lyrics, and writing songs without "versatility and creativity;
Three Days Grace for their "diluted" and "radio-friendly music"; 3 Doors Down for focusing on "snagging hit singles instead of creating quality albums";
Finger Eleven for going in a "pop rock" direction; Bush's "random phrasings of nonsense";
Live's "pseudo pop poetry" that "strangled the essence of grunge",
Puddle of Mudd's "watered down post-grunge sound";
Lifehouse, for tearing down "grunge's sound and groundbreaking structure to appeal more to the masses"; and
Nickelback, which he calls the "featherweight... punching bags of post-grunge" whose music is "dull as dishwater". They saw a return to wide commercial success with 2006's
Pearl Jam, 2009's
Backspacer and 2013's
Lightning Bolt. Alice In Chains reformed for a handful of reunion dates in 2005 with several different vocalists replacing Layne Staley. Eventually settling on
William DuVall as Staley's replacement, in 2009 they released
Black Gives Way to Blue, their first record in 14 years. The band's 2013 release,
The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, reached number 2 on the
Billboard 200. Soundgarden reformed in 2010 and released their album
King Animal two years later which reached the top five of the national albums charts in Denmark, New Zealand, and the United States. Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd joined
Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, Eleven), Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age) and
Dimitri Coats (Off!) to form side project Ten Commandos in 2016. Despite Kurt Cobain's death, the remaining members of Nirvana have continued to be successful posthumously. Due to the high sales for Kurt Cobain's
Journals and the band's best-of compilation
Nirvana upon their releases in 2002,
The New York Times argued Nirvana "are having more success now than at any point since Mr. Cobain's suicide in 1994." This trend has continued through the century's second decade, with the reissuing of the band's discography and release of the authorized documentary
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. In 2012, the surviving members of Nirvana re-united, with
Paul McCartney in place of Cobain, to record a track for the soundtrack Dave Grohl's documentary
Sound City titled "Cut Me Some Slack". One of the most successful rock groups of the 21st century,
Queens of the Stone Age, has featured major contributions from various grunge musicians.
Josh Homme had briefly played in
Screaming Trees with off-and-on QOTSA member
Mark Lanegan, before forming the group. Nirvana's
Dave Grohl and
Eleven's Alain Johannes have also provided notable contributions. Homme and Grohl joined with
Led Zeppelin's
John Paul Jones to form the supergroup
Them Crooked Vultures in 2009. Johannes also performed with the group as a touring member. In the early 2000s, grunge would make multiple regionally based resurgences, albeit minor ones. In 2005,
The Seattle Times made note of groups returning in the Seattle scene. Also, in 2003, the
New York Times noted a resurgence in grunge fashion. fronted a UK grunge revival movement in the late 2000s and early 2010s In the late 2000s and early 2010s, many British publications began to discuss a supposed "grunge revival".
The Guardian credited this scene to have originated in the Yorkshire city of
Leeds, with bands including
Dinosaur Pile-Up,
Pulled Apart by Horses, Old Romantic Killer Band and
Wonderswan, as well as nearby groups Above Them and the Tempus. These bands adopted elements of grunge as a rejection of the locally-dominant
New Yorkshire scene of clean-production
indie rock. The city produced other acts in the movement including Forever Cult and Furr. Nationwide, the central figures to the movement were Dinosaur Pile-Up and London band
Japanese Voyeurs, with
Splashh,
Cheatahs and
Yuck also being prominent figures. Other acts included
Male Bonding,
Tigercub,
Loom and Irish band
Fangclub. In Australia, the forefront acts were
Violent Soho,
DZ Deathrays,
Tired Lion and
Waax. The sonic distinctions between the 2010s grunge revival style and the original movement led
The Independent,
ShortList,
Punktastic and
Soundsphere to call the emerging style "nu-grunge", a term specifically coined in reference to Dinosaur Pile-Up. In 2024,
Noizze writer Dan Hillier Jar of Blind Flies,
False Advertising, Sœur and the Irish band Bitch Falcon as some of the most prominent groups in the style.
Wishy embraced elements of nu-grunge on their 2024 debut
Triple Seven. Of the movement, Dinosaur Pile-Up vocalist Matt Bigland stated "I don’t really think there IS a ‘grunge revival’. I just think there's a bunch of bands that like to ‘slay’ (if you will), and that might have loved those bands from the nineties". Yuck vocalist Max Bloom stated "It’s weird that there’s a certain label of bands called ‘grunge revival’ when there's been guitar bands consistently making amazing music. There hasn't been a stop or start or anything. There's just been more attention given to it" In 2015,
NME writer Gavin Haynes called
Wolf Alice "the end product of the grunge revival". in 2015 During this time, a number of other bands were influenced by grunge. Unlike their forebears, some of these acts ascribe the label to themselves willingly. Many acts have been noted for affiliating and/or collaborating with prominent figures from the original alternative rock era.
Steve Albini has produced for or worked with members of bands such as
Bully, Vomitface, and
Shannon Wright, while
Emma Ruth Rundle of
Marriages has toured with
Buzz Osborne of the
Melvins. Other notable acts that have been labelled as grunge or as heavily influenced by the grunge era, include
Courtney Barnett,
Speedy Ortiz,
Mitski,
2:54,
Slothrust,
Baby in Vain,
Big Thief,
Milk Teeth,
Muskets,
My Ticket Home,
Torres, Lullwater,
Vant, and
Red Sun Rising. were one of the forefront acts in the grunge-inspired genre
soft grunge music. At the same time as this grunge revival, the
emo revival movement was taking place, which produced the
soft grunge music genre. Soft grunge merged elements of 1990s-style
emo with grunge.
Title Fight stood at the forefront of the genre with the success of their 2012 album
Floral Green. The album was widely influential, inspiring many bands to pursue a similar sound and reshaping
Run for Cover Records into a label renowned for its grunge influence. Often, albums were produced by
Will Yip. Other acts in the genre included
Superheaven,
Citizen,
Turnover,
Balance and Composure,
Basement,
Major League,
Culture Abuse,
Movements and
Teenage Wrist. The genre was one of the most prominent sounds in the
pop-punk scene during the mid-2010s. By 2017, an article by
The Alternative said that still playing soft grunge was a "stale idea". These soft grunge bands in turn led to the development of
grungegaze, which merged the genre with
shoegaze. Notable acts include
Narrow Head,
Glare,
Fleshwater,
Bleed and
Split Chain. == Legacy ==