Grunge Bakgrounds

At 15 years old, Seether are starting to slide into middle age and, appropriately, their music is beginning to mature on Isolate and Medicate, their sixth studio album. Once again working with Brendan O'Brien, the grunge-era superstar who helmed Holding Onto Strings Better Left to Fray, Seether gravitate toward the melodic, a shift apparent in both the verses and the riffs, although there's still a tendency to grind out thick neo-grunge guitar workouts both slow ("My Disaster") and fast ("Suffer It All")…

Piece of Cake is the third studio album by the grunge band Mudhoney. Recorded and released in 1992, it was their first album released through Reprise Records. It features several songs, such as "Suck You Dry," "Blinding Sun," and "Acetone," that are consistently featured in Mudhoney's live setlist.Although released at the peak of grunge, a genre Mudhoney had helped create, the band and Piece of Cake did not get any special notice, commercially or critically.

Once considered a remote backwater, Seattle, Washington, and its underground music scene, existed in a state of seclusion. It was a city isolated both geographically from the rest of the country and commercially from the entertainment industry machinations of the major cultural hubs. With technological advancements making the world a smaller place, a huge influx of corporate money changing the demographics of the city itself, and staggering population growth – not to mention the sudden explosion of worldwide interest in Seattle’s musical exports in the early 1990s – the place is not quite the distant territory it once was. Yet, the Emerald City’s subterranean musical petri dish has remained largely a scene unto itself, comprised of devoted DIY practitioners building their community and creating their noise in obscurity.

The sixth full-length effort from the stalwart Florida alt-rockers, The Things We Can't Stop is Cold's first new collection of songs in eight years. Far removed from the harsh Korn- and Tool-influenced sound that earned the group commercial accolades in the early 2000s, the 12-track set hews closer to the dour post-grunge atmospherics of 2011's Superfiction. Commencing with the anti-bullying anthem "Shine," the first of a slew of midtempo rockers that flex both sonic and emotional heft, The Things We Can't Stop paces and frets, but unlike the group's early works, it does its best to bear the weight of the world instead of just raging against it.