Alt Metal

LP 1
Side A —

Side B —

LP 2
Side C —

Side D —

LP 3
Side E —

Side F —

Alternative metal was never one thing. It was art-rock ambition and funk elasticity, industrial menace and noise-rock grit, prog sprawl and pop instinct, all carrying metal's weight but none of its rules. This compilation gathers that whole restless family across four sides, each one charting a different current of the sound.

Side A: The Machine.

Precision and aggression. It opens on Helmet's Milquetoast, the drop-D blueprint that a decade of bands would build on, then moves through the mechanical groove of Prong, the industrial swagger of Marilyn Manson and Filter, and the cathartic churn of Rollins Band. White Zombie's sci-fi riff-hook slams the side shut. This is alt-metal at its most engineered and unrelenting.

Side B: Melodic Weight & Anthems

The genre at its most tuneful and its most massive. Korn lights the fuse, and from there the side breathes between atmosphere and hook: Deftones' shoegaze-metal drift, the taut menace of A Perfect Circle and System of a Down, the elder-statesman grandeur of Faith No More. The side lands on the wide-open melody of Linkin Park's Numb, the genre commercial peak. Weight you can sing along to.

Side C: Funk to Filth.

The most elastic stretch on the record, and the strangest. Living Colour and Primus bring the funk-metal snap, Jane's Addiction the tribal art-rock pull, and then the floor drops out into the sludge of Fudge Tunnel and Melvins, the carnival chaos of Mr. Bungle, and Therapy?'s crushing melody. Groove into grime and back again.

Side D: Doom & Finale.

The long descent home. Skunk Anansie opens with defiance, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden bring the doom-crawl weight, and the mood darkens through Quicksand's underheard melody into the cavernous dread of The God Machine, before Tool's Forty Six & 2 closes everything as the record's prog-metal summit. The heaviest, deepest side, saved for last.

Play it loud.