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Alice in Chains
Alice in Chains, formed in Seattle in 1987, developed a darker, heavier sound than several of their grunge-era Seattle contemporaries, blending metal-influenced guitar riffs with frontman Layne Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell's distinctive, closely blended vocal harmonies across two singers rather than a single lead voice. The band's lyrics frequently and openly addressed drug addiction, depression, and psychological despair with unusual directness even relative to grunge's already dark thematic content, reflecting Staley's own well-documented struggles with heroin addiction that were increasingly reflected in the band's material throughout the 1990s. Staley's addiction eventually led to his near-total withdrawal from public life and touring in the band's final years, and his 2002 death from a drug overdose, discovered only after his body had gone unnoticed in his apartment for roughly two weeks, became one of the grunge era's most somber cautionary tales. The band's eventual 2006 return with new vocalist William DuVall, rather than disbanding permanently after Staley's death, allowed Alice in Chains to continue actively touring and recording new material into the 2020s, giving them one of the more unusual survival stories among the original Seattle grunge scene's major acts.
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R.E.M.
R.E.M., formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980, is widely credited as one of the foundational bands of American alternative and college rock, building a devoted following through independent college radio airplay years before the band achieved mainstream commercial success. Guitarist Peter Buck's jangly, arpeggiated guitar style and frontman Michael Stipe's often deliberately mumbled, difficult-to-decipher vocal delivery on the band's early albums gave R.E.M. a distinctive sound that influenced a generation of subsequent alternative and indie rock guitarists and vocalists. The band's 1991 album Out of Time and its hit single "Losing My Religion" marked R.E.M.'s definitive commercial breakthrough into mainstream popularity, a shift that came after more than a decade of steadily building critical acclaim and college radio success without major commercial radio crossover. R.E.M.'s decision to formally disband in 2011, while still commercially and critically viable rather than continuing past a natural creative endpoint, was relatively unusual among major rock acts, and the band's three-decade career bridging college radio's underground scene and full mainstream commercial success established a template that numerous subsequent alternative rock bands have followed.
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