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Mon 20 October 2025 20:30, UK
While the grunge scene that emerged from the Pacific Northwest in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was a refreshing new take on earlier incarnations of rock music, it still owed an awful lot stylistically to the hard rock acts that had emerged in the decades prior.
Bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney may have been seen as the flagship acts for this burgeoning style, and while they were unique in their rawness, there were a lot of aspects of their work that was still indebted to the past. No genre can be completely original, no matter how hard it tries to be groundbreaking, and while grunge had plenty of scope to take things in new directions, it was far from being a totally new sound entirely.
You can argue that there were more melodic elements to Nirvana’s work that echoes what The Beatles had done in the 1960s, especially since frontman Kurt Cobain was a self-confessed fanatic about the band. However, there were also elements to their sound that drew in fans who had previously moved around in the metal scene, because of how intense the music was and how metal had seemingly softened in a certain manner with some acts making what would later be seen as ‘hair metal’ for a commercial audience.
However, one person from this world who seemingly adored what was happening in the Seattle scene was Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, and despite having led the charge for metal acts in the UK during the 1980s, he was evidently keeping tabs on goings-on overseas, and saw plenty to praise in the work of these emergent forces.
In a 2025 interview with Loudwire, he reflected on how the grunge scene impressed him during the 1990s, and while much of his favourite music from this era had come from this particular scene, he compared a lot of his favourite acts from this new mutation to some of the classic hard rock acts who had influenced his own work in the first place.
“Well, I’ve got to say, I was a massive Chris Cornell and Soundgarden fan – massive,” he proclaimed, before name-dropping another act that he’d always admired. “Alice in Chains as well. I mean, just great songs.” He would then go on to draw a link between Soundgarden and one of the most prominent hard rock bands of the past who had a profound effect on generations of future rock acts. “Soundgarden, to me, they were like a modern-day Led Zeppelin updated, and his voice was just the finest voice of his generation,” Dickinson insisted.
While they offered something new for listeners to grab hold of, and had certainly modernised their sound so that they weren’t a complete reincarnation of Led Zeppelin, there is a definite lineage between the two acts, and especially the inimitable vocals of Cornell, who had power in a way that only really Robert Plant had expressed before. Not only was Cornell a noted fan of Led Zeppelin, but the musical complexity of their work was far above many of their contemporaries, much in the same way as their idols had always been, and this is perhaps one of the main reasons why they’re seen as the logical follow-on from them.
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