Ask any bona-fide music fan what they think about the “Grunge” movement that tornadoed into the music world in the 1990′s and you will get a variety of personal opinions. Seattle Washington was already home to some of the most revered acts in louder music, noteably Traditional Metal masters Queensryche. A guitar-wielding drone voiced blond haired dude named Kurt Cobain along with Bassist Kirst Novoselic, Drummer David Grohl and Guitarist Jason Everman formed Nirvana. While it was not until Everman was gone from the group and the band’s genre defining record “Nevermind” came out that the world suddenly woke up to this sound.

Nirvana brought riffs and anger directly from many of the great classic punks like the Ramones and Misfits into a new audience. Alternative Rock became more mainstream literally overnight.

Metal bands from the area that were caught up in the Nirvana sweep thankfully received some great record sales and media attention as well, despite being re-categorized. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, who are featured regularly on Lithium, were metal acts. During an awards ceremony where Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell accepted an award for a metal performance connected to a track from the band’s great album “Superunknown”, Cornell proudly proclaimed to the audience that they were metal.

I can argue with anyone the opinion that Soundgarden to me were one of the best Seattle metal acts since Queensryche, and Alice in Chains not far behind.

While I personally can acknowledge the great acts that came out of this era, I feel many acts heard on Litihum did not get the critical acclaim they truly deserved.  Some of these acts like Screaming Trees, were in my opinion much more original than some of the bigger names.

Listening to Lithium for a couple of hours these past few days, I have been able to get an entire scope of the music the channel represents. You get the great Seattle acts and tracks from some great artists. You also hear overtones and riffs from 70′s and 80′s punk that helped to define an anger a generation of teens and old school punks. I also have come to appreciate and accept the impact altnernative rock had on music, especially as someone who went to high school in the 90′s.