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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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Soundgarden
Soundgarden, formed in Seattle in 1984, predated most of the other major grunge-era bands by several years and helped establish the genre's foundational sound, blending heavy metal's musical weight and technical guitar work with punk's rawer energy and more emotionally direct songwriting. Frontman Chris Cornell's exceptionally wide vocal range, capable of both a powerful, metal-influenced wail and more subdued, melodic passages within the same song, distinguished Soundgarden's sound from many grunge contemporaries and made Cornell one of the era's most technically respected vocalists. The band's 1994 album Superunknown became a major commercial breakthrough, and the singles "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman" brought Soundgarden's more explicitly metal-influenced version of grunge to a mainstream radio and MTV audience alongside the era's other major Seattle acts. Cornell's 2017 suicide, following the band's initial 1997 breakup and a subsequent 2010 reunion, ended Soundgarden's active career for a second and final time, and his death, alongside those of several other prominent grunge-era musicians, has contributed to the genre's lasting reputation for genuine personal and psychological struggle running alongside its commercial and critical success.
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