Alternative metal

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Alternative metal is heavy metal that blends in elements from alternative rock and other styles not usually found in metal. It often uses downtuned, mid-tempo guitar riffs and mixes melodic vocals with harsher singing or screaming. Some songs explore sounds that feel unusual for metal.

Origins and style
- It began in the United States during the 1980s.
- It drew from many scenes, including funk metal (Faith No More, Living Colour), grunge (Soundgarden, Alice in Chains), hardcore, noise rock, stoner and sludge metal, gothic metal, industrial, and more. There wasn’t one clean “alt-metal” scene; bands varied a lot.
- Early bands that helped shape the sound include Faith No More, Jane’s Addiction, Soundgarden, and Living Colour.

Rise in the 1990s
- The 1990s saw bands like Helmet, Tool, and Alice in Chains gain popularity.
- The Lollapalooza festival helped these artists reach wider audiences.
- Vocal styles ranged from clean singing to aggressive, sometimes alternating between moods, which has been described as “bipolar vocals” in some bands.

Nu metal and mainstream exposure
- In the late 1990s, a tougher subgenre called nu metal became popular. It mixed hip hop, funk, industrial, and other influences with downtuned guitar.
- Korn’s 1994 debut is often seen as the start of nu metal. Other big names included Limp Bizkit, P.O.D., Linkin Park, Slipknot, System of a Down, Deftones, and Staind.
- Nu metal brought alt-metal to the mainstream in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Decline and legacy
- By the mid-2000s, nu metal’s popularity declined as bands moved in different directions.
- Some artists who started in alt-metal didn’t want to be labeled as metal at all.
- By 2016, the term alt metal was less commonly used, but it remains a snapshot of a time when metal mixed boldly with many other influences and helped expand what metal could be.