VWMusic’s Andrew Daly had a small talk with Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard about the effect of ‘90s grunge on the ‘80s hard rock and heavy metal musicians. According to Gossard, hard rock was already stagnant at that time, creating the opportunity for new musicians with low caliber to bring a different perspective to the genre.
In his own words, the Pearl Jam guitarist explained that those performers found a unique way of playing heavy rock songs, a way that would be considered outside the scope of a heavy metal song. These musicians took the chance to experiment with sounds and thus new bands emerged adding a different flavor to the style.
Gossard is known to be a metalhead himself and confessed that growing up, he used to listen to New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate, and Led Zeppelin. Despite taking different shapes and forms hard rock isn’t dead and a lot of the heavy metal bands are still out there.
The rise of one genre doesn’t kill another, it’s just simply like everything else. Things take their natural course and as Stone has mentioned in the interview: “…that’s part of the life cycle, right? . . . I love hard rock, and I always have, but renewal and rebirth are a part of art.”