Grunge

Every few years, an unstoppable new sound rips through rock's weedy undergrowth like a brush fire, destroying everything in its path. You'd hardly imagine that kind of inferno blazing out of the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest, but Seattle is unquestionably grunge's primal flashpoint. Nirvana wasn't the first band identified with the movement, but "Smells Like Teen Spirit" took it mainstream — or, rather, pulled the mainstream to it, with a two-note riff that changed the world. Pearl Jam's "Even Flow" — with fret-charring guitar à la Seattle native Jimi Hendrix — spurred the group's debut album, Ten, to platinum status a dozen times over. And Soundgarden's "Spoonman" packs into four genius minutes Led Zep vocals, Who-style drum-kit smashing, and a guitar sound torn from its amp the way a wolf guts a sheep.

In Next Steps, grunge breaks out of its Seattle home, and we discover what life's like after Kurt.

With its acoustic guitar ringing like a crystal bell, Alice In Chains' drop-dead gorgeous "I Stay Away" might seem an unlikely candidate for grunge's hall of fame, but it's just that loveliness — along with a saving dash of bitter-edged harmony vocal — that rescues the tune from power-ballad cliché and proves just how wide the grunge swathe cut. Leading the era's second-wave charge, SoCal's Stone Temple Pilots strut and growl through "Wicked Garden" while straddling the past and future, an arena-rock band decked out in alt-rock flannel. And Dave Grohl, concerned about upsetting Nirvana's delicate chemistry, wrote the cheery, Ritalin-promoting crunchfest "This Is a Call" — and the rest of the Foo Fighters' debut album — in secret, emerging like a chrysalis from Cobain's shadow when fate made it a necessity.

In Deep Cuts, women get into the act, we hear from the Godfather of Grunge, and the genre inspires a tribute.

In one of his 71 career reinventions, Neil Young picked up the tag Godfather of Grunge, and in "Scenery" he teams up with Pearl Jam, who capture that messy, wheels-coming-off-the-rails vibe that Neil and Crazy Horse elevated to an art form…and, yes, he totally carves on his Les Paul. Like Young, riot grrrl amp-slammers L7 aren't from Seattle, and their all-girl grunge match is something to behold, as they prove in "Shove," staking out their territory in the boys' club with a simple ultimatum: "Get out of my way or I'm gonna shove." And on their aptly named album Never an Adult Moment, the Austin Lounge Lizards' "Grunge Song" deconstructs the whole genre in under three minutes, complete with the sonic swing from hush to howl, and the mandatory "needlessly repetitive and self-indulgent" (their statement, not ours) solo.

Like Starbucks coffee and the 747, grunge launched from the rain-slicked city of Seattle into our lives, transforming everything that came in its wake. Caked with the sledgehammer sludge of Sabbath-style metal — updated and bored out by the Melvins — and shot through with straight-up punk attitude, this new sound erupted from the underground like a volcano, blazing its indie path by burning out virtually everything that had been there before. From the teasing anvil-feather-anvil assault of Nirvana to the louder-than-love (and just about everything else) sonic spew of Soundgarden…seemingly overnight, grunge dominated radio playlists, fashion runways, and the musical landscape in an unstoppable, all-consuming wave. From its humble origins to its worldwide conquest, we've got every devastating decibel right here.