Combining a punk ethos with garage-rock sound and put through a dirty filter of classic rock and metal, grunge exploded from the USA's Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s at a time when the world was hungry for a return to raw, expressive and rootsy guitar rock.
While Nirvana had the biggest and most surprising breakthrough success, and Seattle and proto-grunge record label Sub Pop were the scene's epicentre, the genre's Sabbath-influenced heavy guitar riffs, grooving basslines and blistering drum parts were also heard from Chicago to LA, and from the UK to Australia. Meanwhile, thrift-store flannel shirts and long hair were soon de rigueur amongst disaffected kids the world over. It's old enough now to be termed 'classic rock', but even thirty years hasn't dimmed grunge rock's bright flame, though it would burn out too soon for far too many of its proponents.
