4. Yeah, I guess I would say Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots are all hard rock bands. But my favorite, and probably least well known, example from the grunge-era are Screaming Trees. I loved Sweet Oblivian. I jammed it a ton during my freshman year at college along with Where You Been? Candlebox were basically a hair metal band, and certainly fit the 80s hard rock mold more than the 90s mold. I wouldn’t include them here.

But, your point holds true. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots were hugely successful bands in the 90s. They’re proof that hard rock bands didn’t really die so much as alt themselves into continued success (albeit on a smaller scale). It’s probably a symptom of my current yearning that I kinda miss, and, uh, respect STP in hindsight.

8. I like Drive By Truckers, but there has to be Rock if we have Hard Rock, and I’d place them in the former category. Same with Wilco.

The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s first EP and LP are huge favorites of mine. And those recordings are certainly hard rock. But they’ve pretty much transformed themselves into an indie pop band. Which isn’t a bad thing for them. This year’s record was a grower for me.

I have just added Pink to my Emusic saved-for-later list. I had meant to check that out earlier. But forgot.

The other thing is that there is a lot of aesthetic variation within some of these stoner-metal records. For example, Torche: “Across the Shields” sounds like hard rock in the same way as QOTSA, but “Healer” is just too fast.

2. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the Vines, because I actually haven’t listened to that record much or recently. But I remember liking it.

3. I dunno man. Do you like Oasis? Or Meat Loaf? Then again, I don’t. So Divided just seems like such a perfect example to me of how over-the-top and self-important Trail of Dead are. It just crosses so many lines of taste. I mean, doing a GBV song as an ultra-multitracked, hugely pompous march? That takes balls. I think So Divided does for me what the Darkness does for some other people, because I definitely laughed in disbelief more than once the first time I heard it.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to watch them do those songs live, because they suck so bad at actually playing. The record is produced far past the point of self-parody, but at the same time it really sounds good. I just can’t believe they pulled it off.

4. Putting the hard rock label on Dinosaur calls into question the whole idea that alt-rock had any kind of negative impact on hard rock. But then, I’m inclined to welcome that: what were Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Candlebox but hard-rock bands?

5. I hated Awesome Color when I saw them the first time too, and I wasn’t into what I heard from the first record, but Aborigines has some great stuff on it.

6. I had initially listed the Raconteurs, because I’ve seen them, but the White Strips seemed like an even better example.

7. I heard Wolfmother cover “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush as I was walking by their show at Stubb’s a while back. It was weird.

8. How about the Drive-By Truckers? I think they’re a little overrated, but the hard rock label seems to fit them. What about Wilco’s louder material? What about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? I don’t know that you could call their music punk anymore. Also, it’s completely incredible that we haven’t talked about Boris in this thread yet. I assume you’ve heard Pink?

If I’m defensive, I should apologize. I’m just saying I understand both the limitations and irony of my approach here. But I don’t think it’s a useless exercise. If nothing else, I got a pretty decent playlist for next week just from reading Danny’s responses.

1) I love both Baroness records, but I put them squarely in the Metal category. Indeed, Priestess’s shift towards metal was decidedly in the direction of Baroness, and they couldn’t have picked a better role model.

2) Wait, the Vines are good? I’ll have to check them out. Based on early hype alone, I’d decided to ignore them as major label Strokes rip-offs. Or was that another band?

3) Love Trail of Dead, especially Source Tags and Codes and Worlds Apart but I HATED “So Divided”. You’ll have to tell me the secret to getting into that record.

4) Dinosaur Jr. have actually been featured on Guitar Hero, and I think they’re pretty squarely a hard rock band. They might actually bristle if you said otherwise. Bummed I didn’t think of them when I was writing this post.

5) Awesome Color were pretty hard rockin’, but they bored the hell out of me when I saw them play at The Mink. Interminable songs with very little substance or melody. I’d rather watch a jam band.

Good call on the White Stripes, though. They’re pretty much exactly what I’m talking about, but I failed to mention them. Probably because I’ve never been that big a fan (and the songs I do like by them tend to not be their rockers). So maybe I don’t want what I say I want. Wolfmother, too, are trying hard to fill the void. But they’re an awful, awful rock band.

I’m perfectly comfortable with sales figures as a measure of “hugeness,” which is what you claimed (PREPOSTEROUSLY! )Duran Duran had in excess of Def Leppard. So that makes Alanis Morissette “huger” than Leppard. . . so what? I never said anything about “cultural impact” (which, if such a thing actually exists, Morrisette has had in spades, judging from the Avril Lavigne=> Hannah Montana=> Taylor Swift line of pop). I just said hard rock was mainstream popular music in the ’80s.