@Natalie Vosper

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

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.

If thrash severed heavy metal’s roots in hard rock, groove metal succeeded in stitching them back together. Exhorder, Sepultura and Machine Head all played critical roles in the music’s early development, but Pantera deserve the biggest shout-out. When the Texans’ landmark fifth album, <I>Cowboys From Hell</I>, landed in 1990, it represented a startlingly fresh sound, one marrying thrash’s vile aggression with hard rock’s thick, midtempo rhythms. Key to the album’s success was Dimebag Darrell, whose pugnacious riffs and taut solos connected the dots between Metallica, ZZ Top and Van Halen. Groove metal’s impact certainly has been vast. Its heavy emphasis on rhythm informed both nu-metal’s start/stop syncopation and metalcore’s roiling breakdowns. Another crucial path for its influence has come via Lamb of God, who in the 21st century unleashed a throttling attack that helped build bridges between groove metal, death metal and hardcore punk.

Though Incubus are often put in the nu-metal box, there's edgy music of every stripe in the California band's DNA. To the bedrock of Led Zeppelin's leviathan beats and scything guitars, they fuse the rubbery funk rock of Red Hot Chili Peppers. At the microphone, Brandon Boyd's lyrical outlook and driving vocals meld the personal angst of Nirvana and incendiary attack of Rage Against The Machine.