STONE TEMPLE PILOTS POSTER WINDOWS

Right from the outset, the record announced itself as a mission statement of everything the band had incorporated into its stylistic stew of aggro influences. But Far Beyond Driven was where that sound received its commercial-and arguably critical-apogee, an album that crossed over to hook grunge fans, punks, and hard-rock aficionados at a time when such music was often anathema to mainstream music media, save for the metal ghetto of MTVвЂ™s HeadbangerвЂ™s Ball and magazines like Kerrang! Plus, it was a case of right place, right time nestled between the onset of alt-rock and the subsequent rise of more guttural versions of metalcore, PanteraвЂ™s bombastic, more-is-more intensity held appeal for the same brooding goth kids who had just had their minds opened to the possibility of such pummeling riffs and screams a couple years earlier, as symbolized by Nine Inch NailsвЂ™вЂќ Wish.вЂќ Pantera reinvented themselves in 1990 with Cowboys From Helldistilling their particular version of groove metal into a potent and intense wall of sound that got even heavier on 1992вЂs Vulgar Display Of Power.

Fitting, too, that it came from a group who had originally come up as a hair-metal act, before the members realized that they had absolutely had it with that shit. There were plenty of innovative metal bands thriving below the alt-rock surface of the era, but none with the same lightning-bolt effect on the charts.

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS POSTER WINDOWS

1 on the Billboard charts in its very first weeks of release it was a warning shot across the bow of the oft-emo tendencies of Alternative Nation, one that hinted at the deep hunger for expressions of extreme angst and anger that also made windows rattle far more violently than the contemporaneous sounds of a Pearl Jam or Stone Temple Pilots. The album came out of seemingly nowhere to hit No. From then on, the 21st century saw more metal and metal-adjacent albums hit number one than ever before-and some of them, like SlipknotвЂ™s All Hope Is Gone, are pretty damn heavy at times.Д«ut almost 15 years before that testament to how deeply metal has managed to quietly (ironic, that) insinuate itself into the mainstream, PanteraвЂ™s Far Beyond Driven threw a molotov cocktail into the unquestioned dominance of alternative rock. And at the beginning of the 2000s, ToolвЂ™s Lateralus He gave genuinely progressive and conceptual metal maybe its one and only shot atop the throne, a record whose brilliant and complex arrangements had more in common with Rush than the average nГј-metal of the time.

The rise of hair metal in the вЂ™80s ushered in a handful of top-charting acts (Quiet Riot, Bon Jovi, Guns NвЂ™ Roses, Def Leppard, and MГ¶tley CrГјe), while the вЂ™90s saw Metallica soften its sound and reap the commercial rewards, as well as the rise of rap- and NГј-metal in the back half of the decade, with avatars of each (Rage Against The Machine in the case of the former, Korn and Limp Bizkit the latter) claiming the top spot, some more than once. It doesnвЂ™t happen often, but metal-or, perhaps more accurately, appreciably accessible subgenres of metal-occasionally manage to reach the rarified air of the number-one spot on the Billboard 200, the chart ranking the most popular albums and EPs in the US, based on sales and streaming metrics. Release Date Rivals is a feature that looks back on a specific date in history to note the simultaneous release of two albums-one a well-known and historically appreciated album by a commercially successful artist, and one lesser-known record that arguably deserves equal, if not more, time in the spotlight as its better-known competitor.Дate: MaThe champ: Pantera, Far Beyond Driven

Pantera (Photo: Paul Natkin/Getty) and Unwound (Photo: Reuben Lorch-Miller) Image: Karl Gustafson

Stone temple pilots poster