GRUNGE POLL: BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Listen, we know that mixing grunge bands and a sale on bike components is a bizarre juxtaposition. We know it doesn’t make sense. But hear us out, it’s the perfect time of year to revisit some of these albums while you’re working on your bike in the garage. For various reasons (the horrors of 2025) we’re also pretty pissed off right now and grunge just feels right. This genre is the heavy dose of nostalgia we need while daydreaming of the riding season ahead. Plus, we might harbor just a wee bit of local pride in the Seattle sound. Just to be nice yes we included a couple of our faves from outside of the PNW.

“For as long as guitars have been plugged into amplifiers, the loudest noise in America has tended to emanate from the Pacific Northwest. The region played a transformative role in the evolution of rock’n’roll many times over throughout the 1960s and ’70s, with Washington State alone birthing everyone from proto-punks the Sonics to Jimi Hendrix to Heart. But all that was a mere distant rumble of thunder compared to the storm that erupted when, in the mid-’80s, a bunch of long-hairs in the Seattle area came to the then-radical conclusion that Black Flag and Black Sabbath shared more than just a favorite color.”

-Pitchfork on the birth of Grunge