90's GRUNGE/ALTERNATIVE Riffs That Won Us METALHEADS Over (Part 1) 

Soundgarden is literally heavier than most metal bands these days. You can have a double bass pedal, downstrokes on the 7th string and a guy screaming and still sound weak. So many riffs that lack groove or power. This is a great list, cheers man

You are the only guitar teacher i can pay attention to thanks for the great lessons markiplier🤘

love the Hum nod. You’d Prefer an Astronaut and Downward Is Heavenward are two of the best rock albums of the 90s. RIP Bryan too.

Geek USA is an incredible collection of riffs, sewn together with fluidity and expertise!

Hum is one of the most underrated bands of all time! RIP BSP. Their latest album Inlet is killer.

The Geek USA thumbnail brought me here. What an amazing song!

Ohhh man. "Broken" was one of my first albums....the break riff in "Last" kicked my ass lol. And their version of "Physical." Every bit as sexy as "closer." Great list. 👍🏻

To be fair, AiC always described themselves as firmly in the heavy metal camp. Songs like ''We Die Young''' and 'Bleed the Freak'' bear that out. Nirvana could be very punk at times, like on ''Territorial Pissngs''. And ''Mountain Song'' is just a straight up hard rock/metal riff.

Glad to see The Melvins in here. I got hooked on Houdini, but Queen off of their Stoner Witch album is my top pick for heavy riff.

My additions: AiC - We Die Young Jane's Addiction - Stop Everclear - Santa Monica Collective Soul - Heavy (though Shine was earlier, this song really solidified my like for the band) STP - Sex Type Thing The Cranberries - Zombie NiN - Head Like a Hole

The Melvins! Hooch off Houdini was such a hard hitting sludgy riff. Also, I love that first Nirvana album. Lots of great heavy riffs on that one.

Always pleasantly surprised to see people acknowledge The Melvins

Hum!!! One of the best bands of the 90's that not enough people know about. They're one of my all time favorites. Always on heavy rotation. Have you listened to Inlet? Killer album. RIP Bryan 💚

YOU GAVE HUM A SHOUTOUT!!! YEEEESSSSS!!! The wall of sound produced in Stars is just...the BIGGEST feeling thing I've ever heard.

I musically came of age in the mid-2000s, but I think Epic by Faith No More fits right in here. It's not the heaviest 90s alt-rock guitar parts, but it's probably one of the most...[ahem] *epic* guitar parts. The "epicness" of that solo reminds me of the "epicness" of Master of Puppets solo (and other heavy metal solos in general), moreso than most other 90s alt-rock/grunge.

Thanks for including the Melvins. One of my favorite bands.

01:38 HUM!!!!! Loved that album. So glad to see their riff here!

Hum's newest album Inlet is INCREDIBLE. That band should have been so much bigger.

Thought for Smashing Punpkins you were gonna pick the chorus riff from “Zero”. Always gets me pumped. Pleasantly surprised with “Geek USA” though! Super underrated

Hum is so good. That bridge riff is GNARLY, especially at a faster tempo like on the love 120 minutes version. Also Geek USA is too good.

🤘🏻🔥🤘🏻🔥LOVE all of these! Grunge/ Alternative really are such killer genres! Congrats on 688k Subscribers!

Your production is sounding great Mike. Some of these sound better than the original recording.

I've been subbed for a while and watched you for a few year and your sheer love for everything music, guitar and drums is still very inspiring, you just live music and it's great to see.

One thing I appreciate about your videos is how cool the drum parts are in the songs you choose. Props to your drummer as well!

Jinx by Tad deserves a spot on the list as well even tho they faded into obscurity after the mid 90s

Love these compilation youre doing recently!

Love how during the collective soul riff you placed the pop right at the pause, gave me a good laugh

I loved this video! Not just because these are the songs of my youth, but because the first thing that popped into my head was 'Pop into Pop Up Video'! Man how I miss that show. Great work Mike! I hope to see more 'pop up' videos in the future!

I am so glad that you included Nine Inch Nails in there! They are my favorite band

AWESOME selection man! Love it, love it, love it!!!!!

Mr.Moustache was a sick riff to learn when i got into guitar

You covered some of my favorite tunes from the 90s dude u rock thanks🙏🏽💫🎶✨✌🏽😎🎸

I would have included Go and Once by Pearl Jam, Outshined and Slaves & Buldozers by Soundgarden, Don't You by Candlebox, Dead & Bloated by Stone Temple Pilots, Pure Massacre and Leave me out by Silverchair, Know your Enemy by Rage Against The Machine... there are many great riffs on all those bands catalogues actually :D

A lot of metal heads hate anything that isnt metal and thats a shame, theres so much great music out there in the rock genre alone

Heroin Girl!!! Hell yeah!! That entire album was sooooo good.

Grunge is on of my favorite genres to listen to, but thrash and death metal still takes the cake for the best imo

All great riffs! Couldn't believe you included Jane's Addiction!😁 Always thought it was a hard-core riff and remember making bandmates learn it just to jam out on it. Lol.

keep doing these videos. Makes me feel a lot better. You're doing it all by yourself. No need to collab!

Great trip down memory lane. Great job.

Your drumming is just as good as the guitar playing. Great job! Maybe you could deep dive some of the albums you played riffs from.

Excellent riff collection. "Mountain Song" was released back in the 80's though.

Awesome concept keep em coming

Love the me mustache. That sound never gets enough recognition. As well as swap meet.

"Easy in an easy chair" You summoned me again with Nirvana. As always I highly respect your riff choices and skills. Rock on!

Love seeing some Collective Soul on here. Seriously underrated. While they've certainly gone more pop in the 21st century, their 90s stuff had some excellent riffage. Ironically, Pretty Donna on the 1st album is what made me realize, as a kid, classical music could be awesome.

The Melvins are fucking awesome. They take everything that you thought you knew about music and just flip it on it’s head

It was like pop-up video, love it!!!

D'Arcy was my hero in the 90s. Great video as always.

Nice list. I hadn't heard that Hum song. Mike Einziger (Incubus) has some great riffs that could prob fall in this category for 90s, like A Certain Shade Of Green.

Don't need to be as cool as Navarro, you got your own brand of cool going on. Keeping it real!

I had a strong feeling Them Bones would be on here! Also, killer guitar tone! I’d love to see some content regarding that tone on the channel!

Smashing Pumpkins stood out for me amongst all those other cool bands. That sound GArden riif is twisted as hell too, and the drumming in it- oh boy!

Great list, one to add would be two from the band Failure off their '96 record Fantastic Planet. Sergeant Politeness and Dirty Blue Balloons. The latter drops like a bomb when it kicks in.

Wow i never noticed kurt palm muted in mr moustache before thank u that explains a lot

Loved the Hum riff, fantastic song! Wish you included some Our Lady Peace or I Mother Earth, ironically two Canadian bands that had great debut albums.

Love that riff from HUM, best part of the song. They reminded me of Smashing Pumpkins with a different singer. Starts out really quiet dreamy then gets heavy.

People hate the word “grunge”, but not me. In my opinion is was the best peak for rock music. I love how you’re playing all this on a fender jaguar. I have one myself:)

Siamese Dream and Core... immaculate albums. Thanks for the memories.

You could fill 2022 with a deep dive on every one of these songs

Nice to see Collective Soul get some love

Man, Jane's Addiction is so fuckin cool!

Awesome video and series you got going. Collective Soul’s Heavy and Filter’s Hey Man Nice Shot could have easily made it on this list, among many others already mentioned.

I love that jag

Geek USA is highly underrated! The riff yes but the guitar solo in the middle along with Jimmy's drums in particular just as the solo wraps up kick your ass!

I literally went "yeah" out loud during Shine, haha.

Those riffs are killer! 🔥🔥🔥

This is my era too. I was a teenager/ early 20's when these came out.

Yeah Hum deserved so much more

Good stuff!

Really flexed with some overlooked tunes.

This is just great

Mr Moustache is fucking killer, one of their best riffs. Smashing have so many to choose from. That Everclear album is damn good, my personal favorite is the 1st track: Electra Made Me Blind, great riff too. Hard to choose which one from the best Soundgarden album, you really can't go wrong. Honey Buckey makes me hard everytime, fucking savage song. AIC is straight up metal(ish I guess for the elitists) lol Great selection man, awesome video!

Hum is from Champaign, IL. That's close to my neck of the woods.

j mascis artist series please!

Mike riffing "Bulls On Parade" makes it sounds Robin Trower wrote it 🤣 (in my opinion at least)

Man I loved skating to Everclear many moons ago

I was gonna say We Die Young but Them Bones is awesome too!

I want you to be the drummer in my band. Great tone too. Well done 💀

Hey Mike, did you ever have issues with your jaguar's bridge? if so, how did you fix them? thanks!! I've read mustang bridges are a nice replacement, but I'm not so sure

Could you tell us your signal chain? It did a great job of covering all of those tunes. (Sorry if you told us and I missed it)

That Jag is SO GOOD!

Never heard of most of them! 😎🤘🏼

3:01 must've inspired Paul Gray to write the masterpiece that is "Left Behind".

What did you use to record the geek USA part it sounds huge!

so fuckin hyped now not gonna lie... gotta start with some AIC and Man in a Box...

It took me a little while to come around to grunge but by the time Facelift came out I was fully onboard.

Have you received my mail ‘bout the pink Jackson guitar (pickups) ? Cheers!

My favorite smashing pumpkins song geek USA. The drum performance is so epic in itself

Ha, loved the 90's MTV style pop-ups! Vaseline was a killer choice for STP - the riff in itself is nothing special but when you take all the skills of the band it turns into something really unique and special. There's a good few other songs I would've chosen for the pumpkins though

SOMEONE ELSE KNOWS HUM some of the best riffs and drum parts are in that band incredible video btw

So loved the music that preceded grunge that i could never care for it. Only song in this bunch I liked was the Collective Soul one.

I think AIC was the gateway to becoming a metal head for me

Make a part 2 if you can plss

Hated this stuff at the time but like hair/glam metal im getting a little bit of appreciation for it these days.

Yeah

“Wargasm” by L7 too!

The running joke is of course that Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were in fact metal bands... They just let their bassists be heard in the mix.

The most metal moment in alt rock is the breakdown in Stars.

Collective Soul has some great riffs in their catalog.

Nirvana's Bleach album has some pretty heavy riffs as well. The song Paper Cuts is about a true story of a woman that kept her kids locked up. Soundgarden also had some riffs that could have fit well on a metal album.