The ’90s were a wild time for rock music. From grunge to industrial and the rise of punk in the mainstream… a lot was going on.
One thing that maybe gets overlooked sometimes is how a lot of ’90s bands utilized both ambient and noise elements in their sound, which could blend fairly evenly in some cases, or simply be an ingredient for others. Let’s start with a band that leaned much more towards noise…
Helmet
Helmet is the most likable heavy band on the planet. Bar none. Not that that necessarily relates to this list, but it’s a truth I need the world to understand.
Interestingly, the band’s first era ran for nearly the entire ’90s decade (before they disbanded for about 5 years), and they pretty much wrote the recipe for how loud, heavy, bass-centric noise rock.
What I think people miss is how they often used that heaviness to create atmospheric, low-end ambience in some of their songs, like “Speechless” and “I Know.”
Also unrelated, but Helmet is currently on tour with Gwar, and you should definitely go.
The Jesus Lizard
The Jesus Lizard pretty much wrote the book on what we’ve been talking about here: finding a carefully balanced fusion of ambiance and noise.
Their sophomore album, GOAT, is a great example. It has their biggest song of all time — “Then Comes Dudley” — which is mostly noise, but then there’s some heavy ambient sounds mixed in. That’s contrasted with “Rodeo in Juliet,” which spends more time being ambient and then occasionally utilizes noise.
Garbage
This is the one where I fully expect pushback. When it came to my mind, I was like, “Oh, they are not gonna get on board here,” but hear me out…
Garbage is not a band that has traditionally been cited as utilizing noise elements, but they’ve often injected electronic ambient elements into their sound, like “Queer” and “Milk” from their debut self-titled album, and “Medication” from their second record, Version 2.0.
To the point, though, you can definitely hear some noise rock elements in the choruses on some of their songs like “Supervixen” and “Vow.”
Pixies
Look, I’ve put the Pixies on lists before, and I’ll do it again. They are perfect and they fit everywhere. For the sake of this particular list, I only revisited songs they released in the ’90s, and I feel completely justified in this choice
You can hear some incredible ambient moments on songs like “Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons,” from Trompe le Monde (1991), and you can hear quite a lot of noise through both their ’90s albums, but how about we specifically point to the fittingly titled “Rock Music” from Bossanova (1990).
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