3 Heavy Metal Albums That Survived the Height of Grunge

Sometimes what we remember about a previous era is wrong. You might think that grunge wiped the map with the leftover spandex of a Poison video. The rise of alternative rock certainly changed the landscape, but it wasn’t exactly overnight. And some big-name heavy metal and hard rock bands, even some associated with hair metal, flourished alongside, or despite, grunge. These heavy metal albums not only survived grunge, but the first one especially came to define the 90s as much as anything out of Seattle.

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Metallica: ‘Metallica (The Black Album)‘

Between August and October of 1991, these albums dropped: Ten by Pearl Jam, Nevermind by Nirvana, Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden, and Metallica’s self-titled “Black Album.” Metallica changed its sound, replacing the speed metal riffs of Motörhead with the slow and simple grooves of AC/DC. “Enter Sandman” was every bit as massive as “Jeremy”, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and “Rusty Cage”. If grunge was dominating pop culture, no one told Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, or Jason Newsted. According to Billboard, The Black Album has sold more than 20 million copies.

Guns N’ Roses: ‘Use Your Illusion I’ and ‘II‘

Also arriving in September 1991: Guns N’ Roses sprawling two-album collection. While GN’R emerged from the Sunset Strip hair metal scene, Appetite For Destruction proved the band was too big to be contained within the glitzy movement that soon faded under the cloudy skies of Seattle. But GN’R didn’t fade, they were too busy headlining stadiums. Grunge was supposed to do away with rock clichés and excess. But tell that to Axl Rose, who swam with dolphins in the music video for “Estranged”.

Def Leppard: ‘Adrenalize‘

By 1992, with grunge rock’s wall-to-wall coverage on MTV well underway, Def Leppard followed up Hysteria with Adrenalize. Eddie Vedder may have loathed being a rock star, but Joe Elliott opens “Let’s Get Rocked” with a simple question: “Do you wanna get rocked?” Everything about this track should have been dead in the water by 1992. But it topped the mainstream rock chart, and Adrenalize sold a whopping eight million copies while Vedder was jumping from the rafters at Lollapalooza and clothing companies were jacking up the price of his thrift-store corduroy jacket.

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