Underrated bands of the 90’s

That debut album jams so hard.

My underrated 90s band would be King's X. Although they have a lot of material outside the 90s, the 90s was most of their peak material.

Blind Melon is awesome. King's X also quite good.

Fugazi is a big one for me. Helmet and Life of Agony also should get more love.

As far as Metal goes, I've loved Machine Head ever since their first album dropped in '94.


That song was huge for me on that album. Also, many years later, Biny (an old FoH guy from mIRC) introduced me to another of their songs.

Kirun said:

Their "Gran Turismo" album is so fucking underrated. That album is fucking awesome.

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Great call. Cardigans had some seriously underrated albums in the 90s. Great jazzy pop with some creative songwriting.

Yeah AiC is definitely not underrated. They get plenty of respect.

Dude AiC was pretty huge. With the exception of Soundgarden they were far more metal than the other grunge bands. I just saw them like two years ago to an almost sold out show of 3,000. Well over 20 years into their career. I don't know if you can call that underrated in anyway.

Alex said:

Dude AiC was pretty huge. With the exception of Soundgarden they were far more metal than the other grunge bands. I just saw them like two years ago to an almost sold out show of 3,000. Well over 20 years into their career. I don't know if you can call that underrated in anyway.

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Saw AiC just after their first album came out. Baccanal was the name of the club, in San Diego, held about 500 people max.

Opening act was a band calling themselves Mookie Blaylock (after the basketball player). Never heard of them. The crowd hadn't showed up yet. So it was just about 30 or 40 of us in the club watching this act. Most of us back at the bar getting a head start on the buzz. The singer came out and was very shy, had long hair and stared at the ground the whole time. Couldn't see his face. The guitarist kept encouraging him.

The singer was amazing though. The few of us there started to drift into the front of the stage. We were all just blown away at how good this band with the wierd name was. The rest of the crowd eventually showed up as Mookie was leaving the stage. Packed house for AiC. They came on and was amazing, Layne Staley had this devil goatie thing going on and he played it up. Great show.

But afterwards i went to the local music store, the one that had all the weird and new bands and asked them for Mookie Blaylock, they had never heard of them.

They changed their name and a few months later their first album came out. It was Pearl Jam.



Bah: Can't believe I fucked that story up. Pearl Jam was originally Mookie Blaylock. Eddie was the shy singer and Stone Gossard was urging him on. Pearl Jam played a few small venues in San Diego (Eddie is from here) before they blew up. Had Nirvana on the brain while typing. The early 90's were amazing for new bands. Saw Nirvana a few months later at the Del Mar fair grounds. That was a great festival, Megadeth also played.

For under rated bands from then: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Butthole Surfers, The Flaming Lips, Body Count, the list is huge.

Grim1 said:

Saw AiC just after their first album came out. Baccanal was the name of the club, in San Diego, held about 500 people max.

Opening act was a band calling themselves Mookie Blaylock (after the basketball player). Never heard of them. The crowd hadn't showed up yet. So it was just about 30 or 40 of us in the club watching this act. Most of us back at the bar getting a head start on the buzz. The singer came out and was very shy, had long hair and stared at the ground the whole time. Couldn't see his face. The guitarist kept encouraging him.

The singer was amazing though. The few of us there started to drift into the front of the stage. We were all just blown away at how good this band with the wierd name was. The rest of the crowd eventually showed up as Mookie was leaving the stage. Packed house for AiC. They came on and was amazing, Layne Staley had this devil goatie thing going on and he played it up. Great show.

But afterwards i went to the local music store, the one that had all the weird and new bands and asked them for Mookie Blaylock, they had never heard of them.

They changed their name and a few months later their first album came out. It was Pearl Jam.



Bah: Can't believe I fucked that story up. Pearl Jam was originally Mookie Blaylock. Eddie was the shy singer and Stone Gossard was urging him on. Pearl Jam played a few small venues in San Diego (Eddie is from here) before they blew up. Had Nirvana on the brain while typing. The early 90's were amazing for new bands. Saw Nirvana a few months later at the Del Mar fair grounds. That was a great festival, Megadeth also played.

For under rated bands from then: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Butthole Surfers, The Flaming Lips, Body Count, the list is huge.

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I went to Clash of the Titans in 1991. It was supposed to be Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and Testament, but for some reason Testament dropped out. The opening act instead was some band nobody had ever heard of called Alice in Chains. I thought they were pretty good, but they got no love from the crowd that night. The Slayer fans basically booed them off stage. Looking back it's always funny to me that I watched such a great band get booed off a stage. In 1991 the media/promoters/etc. were still trying to lump the brand new grunge bands in with the old guard metal bands. Obviously it didn't work out very well most of the time. Not only was the music very different, but so was the style/attitude of the fans. It took a couple years for people to realize that grunge was its own thing entirely.

I actually saw the Butthole Surfers, The Flaming Lips, and STP a couple years later. Show was an absolute blast. I don't know about the Surfer's being underrated (I think they might be rated just right), but I totally agree the Lips are. I actually think it's pretty hard coming up with underrated 90's bands tbh. Blind Melon is definitely a great example of an underrated 90's band. I remember everyone in my crew absolutely hating the MTV vid for No Rain ( the general consensus was that it was "gay as fuck") and everyone wrote them off after that. It was literally decades later when I rediscovered that we had totally missed a ton of great music because of that stupid video.

I dunno- I guess I'd probably say the Meat Puppets were underrated. Maybe GWAR? Primus? Those are bands with a huge catalog of great music the stretches back into the 80's that a lot of people still haven't heard of today. Not sure if that's the standard for "underrated" though.