Capturing the essence and trajectory of an entire music genre during a particular timeframe can often be challenging. In the age of the internet, music has become so diverse and fragmented that conventional genre classifications are increasingly deemed irrelevant. Nevertheless, when examining the last decade of alternative rock, it’s hard to overlook the hazy atmosphere that has enveloped a prominent segment of the genre. A revival of various iterations of 90s and early 2000s rock has gained significant traction and has even been given a straightforward hybrid name: grungegaze.
Grungegaze merges its titular genres (grunge and shoegaze, for those who might need clarification) into a murky, robust fusion that highlights thick guitar textures and nostalgic elements. It’s a direct form of rock music (spanning the spectrum from metal to indie) characterized by simple, heavy riffs, ambiguous lyrics about alienation and anxiety, and a distinctly American influence on the vocal styles and overall aesthetic, even among British artists in the scene.
Notable names in the modern grungegaze landscape include US bands like Narrow Head, Soul Blind, Modern Color, Glare, Trauma Ray, and Leaving Time, along with related groups exploring the heavier side of the sound, such as Fleshwater, Bleed, and ASkySoBlack. In the UK, promising acts like Oversize and Split Chain have emerged recently, both of which are signed to prominent US labels, SharpTone and Epitaph, respectively. A lineage of popular bands from the 2010s, including UK groups Basement and Higher Power and US bands like Title Fight, Superheaven, and Balance & Composure, provides context for these artists in the 2020s. The style frequently intersects with the hardcore scene, with many of these bands from both eras performing at the internationally recognized UK festival Outbreak.
Looking back further, instead of drawing inspiration from iconic bands like Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine, the current wave seems more captivated by the foundational styles of darker, heavier groups such as Smashing Pumpkins and Deftones; trailblazers in blending shoegaze textures with alt rock and alt metal. Influential underground acts like Hum and Sunny Day Real Estate also play a role, alongside original alt metal bands like Quicksand and Helmet, and even post-grunge acts like Bush and Silverchair. There’s minimal reverence for the delicate neo-psych and earlier UK shoegaze styles of bands like Slowdive and Ride. This distinctly American concoction of retro musical and visual influences spans everything from slacker MTV rock to classic skate videos. Even the typography often pays homage to a bygone era, as seen on the debut albums of Fleshwater and Split Chain.
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Sonically, a deliberate sense of cloudy, weighty haze is the defining characteristic of the grungegaze musical palette, conjuring feelings of mental fog through its dense, distorted sound. While the term 'dreamy' could apply, it feels more like a fugue state; a state of waking drowsiness rather than an enchanting daydream. Although some grungegaze tracks incorporate a nu metal-style bounce (like Narrow Head’s ‘Sunday’ or Soul Blind’s ‘Stuck In A Loop’), a hallmark of the genre is the midtempo trudging pace of many songs. From Trauma Ray’s ‘Relay’ to Oversize’s ‘Fall Apart’ to essentially every track by Modern Color, these bands blend droning, head-nodding tempos with song structures that embrace the familiar quiet verse/loud chorus dynamic of grunge.
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Another significant characteristic is the use of lyrics and song titles that can be interpreted as either intriguingly vague or frustratingly dull, depending on one’s perspective. For instance, Leaving Time’s debut album includes tracks with titles like ‘And On’, ‘Fading’, ‘Only Forever’, and ‘Untitled’, while Trauma Ray’s debut features single-word titles like ‘Torn’, ‘Spectre’, and ‘Drift’. This sense of ambiguity carries over into the vocal performances, which often seem like an afterthought given how low they are mixed and the frequently unimpressive vocal abilities, with many singers sounding similar and often nearly inaudible in live performances.
These artistic choices resonate with the growing fanbase of the subgenre and appear to be a conscious decision by the musicians. However, the pervasive use of alt rock clichés is striking, especially upon closer examination of the lyrics that can, to be blunt, resemble teenage bedroom poetry. Narrow Head’s album ‘Moments of Clarity’ is particularly notable for this. Generic titles such as ‘Breakup Song’ and ‘The Real’ feature underwhelming lyrics like the line from ‘Breakup Song’: “haven’t seen you in a while now/but I see it pretty clear that we won’t speak for a while now,” or the lackluster chorus of the title track: “my head’s numb today/your eyes burn in
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Capturing the essence and trajectory of an entire musical genre during a specific time frame can be quite challenging. Music in the age of the internet is