Pantera were awesome. In the same way that Alice in Chains are not responsible for bands like Staind and Nickelback, just because Pantera introduced a new approach to metal that influenced bands like Korn took influence from, that should not be held against them.

"the fact is, both nu-metal and grunge both lacked the musicianship to last longer than a short while"

And then there is the band name. The worst in the history of popular music, and one that pretty much summed up the band.

Don't forget, there were a number of great metal records that were released in the early naughties.

"In 1991, it was likely doubtful anyone thought Poison or Mötley Crüe
would headline arenas again; yet 2015 saw the Crüe playing to packed
houses on a nightly basis on its farewell tour."

In England, we had New Model Army and the Levellers taking Folk Punk to the mainstream.

I concur, if Pearl Jam had been from any other American city, they would never have been compared to Nirvana, and when you compare Nirvana to Pearl Jam, its no wonder Cobain hated the comparision.

Actually, Richey James only played guitar once on their first three LPs (Die in the summertime", the Holy Bible) and spent most of the recording time working on artwork, words or drinking), so in the studio, they were a power trio as such, though most of their songs do have two or more guitar parts.

Im not sure they can be referred to as a power trio, on record they always seemed a bit thin and lacking in muscle in the drum and bass department compared to many of their contempories, though I do like a bit of Saturation.

Great Article on T Rex, one of the best Gateways so far (The worst were probably the half baked shoegazing one and the Madchester feature).

3 minutes is too short to define an era, though a full record can do that for certain places and spaces in time, see Marvin Gaye, Whats going on, and Pink Floyd, Dark side of the moon. (I know, not original, they are kind of the go to records when talking about these things, but they both do it so well, inner city…

Worst Sci Fi Rock record? I vote for Our Lady Peace, Spiritual Machines. Sub Live post grunge, with one of the most annoying singers of all time.

They do have a stigma in the UK, any mention of Grunge and they are the whipping boys of that style, along with Bush. Never mind that for most of their career, they sounded more of a garage rock band with a bent for Bowie and the Beatles than Pearl Jam.

Saw METZ open for the Meat Puppets and Mudhoney in Newcastle, England. They were on for 30 mins, and they rocked almost every second of it. In comparison to METZ and the Country/Funk/Boogie Rock/Metal/Bluegrass of the Meat Puppets, Mudhoney came up a bit short.

Err, Candlebox released their debut in 1993. If they could not kill Hair Metal in their own backyard, how could you blame them for killing it?

Black Hole Sun is meant to be a really slow, and really depressing song, and it was written at a time when Chris Cornell was drinking himself into oblivion. I love the song and the video, and on the lyrics, they don't make sense, but like a lot of SG songs, they are supposed to sound pretty badass, and I think they do.

Actually, I would suggest 1993 was the last gasp of Hair Metal, when Candlebox came along. They sounded far more like guns n' roses than Nirvana, and Kevin Martin had a pretty high voice, like Vince Neils. I would suggest that was the death rattle for 80s pop metal.

Great video, but the song is a bit lackluster, though the horns do add something. Not as good as take me out.

Not bad.

As detailed in the Now thats what they called music series, Will.i.am is an evil genius who was hell bent on the destruction of Pop music, so Im guessing his lyrics are bad by design.