The 1990s saw the genres of the 1980s grow apart rather than fuse. Each of those genres (lo-fi pop, industrial, gothic, roots-rock, noise-rock, indie-pop, techno, ambient, etc) multiplied and evolved in a fashion largely independent of the others.

The 1990s marked, in many ways, the revenge of the "province". While the "new wave" and punk-rock (and rap and disco) had been centered around the big metropolitan areas in the North and in the West, the 1980s had slowly opened up to the rest of the country. By the time Bill Clinton became president (1992), the South, for example, had regained its grip on down-to-earth popular music, slowly establishing a supremacy over the whole gamut: alt-rock, pop, and, of course, roots-rock. The 1990s were also the age of Seattle, another relatively "provincial" center.

There were perhaps fewer new genres created in the 1990s than in any of the previous decades, but a few stand out: grunge, post-rock, trip-hop, drum'n'bass, glitch music. On the other hand, both new and old genre diverged much more than in any previous decade, de facto splitting rock music into a loose federation of subgenres.

An involuntary catalyst for the commercial success of the new genres was the magazine Billboard, that finally changed the way it ranked singles and albums by tallying actual sales at retail stores instead of using the industry-manipulated word of mouth. Suddenly, rock outsold pop, and "minority" genres such as hip-hop and country entered the charts. This, in turn, led the industry to invest more in these genres.

New York's legacy 1990-94

The influence of Sonic Youth was perhaps the most visible. Mostly unknown during the 1980s, Sonic Youth came slowly to represent "the" quintessential alternative band. An even more "alternative" act, Pussy Galore, was a close second. No surprise, then, that a few of the new leaders emerged from those two bands. Bewitched (1) were formed by Pussy Galore's drummer Bob Bert, and recorded a boldly experimental work, Brain Eater (1990).

Jon Spencer's wife Cristina Martinez led Boss Hog (1), that re-invented party-music first on Cold Hands (1990), featuring Honeymoon Killers' bassist Jerry Teel and Unsane drummer Charlie Ondras, and then on White Out (2000), both clever revisitations of rock stereotypes.

Like Pussy Galore, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (3) was a bass-less trio playing careless, amateurish, skeletal and grotesque blues. The difference is that Spencer had dispensed with the "punk-rock" factor. A stylist of bad taste, Spencer carried out a postmodernist deconstruction of the blues, first on the cacophonous and viscerally crude Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (1992), which was virtually an insult to the great bluesmen of the past, then with the childish Extra Width (1993), and finally with the streamlined Orange (1994), which was in many ways his most accomplished (albeit not innovative) collection. These works contained psychotic rave-ups, demented jamming and scary vocals, which represented a "hip" kind of background music for the distorted values of the post-punk generation. The sophisticated sloppiness of Now I Got Worry (1996) and Acme (1998), the first Spencer album that featured a bass, further diluted the original outrage and presented a more civilized (i.e. less beastly) con-man.

New York, which had been the birthplace of noise-rock, had the most varied and crowded scene of noise-rock bands: the Dustdevils, fronted by the unpleasant vocals of Jaqi Dulany; Babe The Blue Ox, with the odd dynamics of Babe The Blue Ox (1993); St Johnny, whose High As A Kite (1993) was derivative of Sonic Youth; Bunny Brains, who delivered the creative chaos of Bunny Magick (1994); Versus (1), whose Secret Swingers (1996) fused Television's transcendental acid-rock and Sonic Youth's atonal pop; Lotion, with the mildly psychedelic Nobody's Cool (1996); Sleepyhead, disciples of Sonic Youth who moved on to psychedelic folk.

Overall, noise-rock was a metropolitan, intellectual affair, relatively removed from the populist issues of the American heartland.

The legacy of apocalyptic hardcore 1991-92

Chicago's noise-rock was heavily influenced by the subculture of hardcore, and by Big Black's apocalyptic noise. Jesus Lizard (13) summarized the style better than anyone else. The historical line-up of Scratch Acid vocalist David Yow, Scratch Acid bassist David Sims, Phantom 309's drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison, was the vanguarde of a new kind of hardcore punk-rock that had absorbed funk, noise and industrial music. The EP Pure (1989) and the full-length Head (1990) were dramas of macabre hyper-realism, immersed into urban neurosis as viewed from Yow's sick mind. Goat (1991), their most accomplished work, found a magical balance between Yow's psychotic mumbling and screaming (and perverted visions), Denison's elegant vocabulary of grinding, scathing, sobbing, lashing sounds, and a repertory of ever-mutating epileptic rhythms. The quartet penned lugubrious, visceral, vulgar, truculent, abrasive nightmares. A less disordered and less pathological affair, Liar (1992) was still highly energetic, sometimes chaotic, and always galvanizing. The instrumental technique refined on Down (1994) stood as an impressive contribution to redefining the very essence of rock music. But their music was, first and foremost, a music of fear, the fear of a young urban population whose life was reduced to a series of agonizing spasms. The central character of their stories, a sort of mythological psychopath, was the collective subconscious of that population. If punk-rock had been the sound of a battlefield, the sound of Jesus Lizard was the sound of the wounded who rattled in the cold of the night.

In nearby Minnesota, Flour (1), the project of former Rifle Sport's bassist Peter Conway, recorded albums such as Luv 713 (1990) that wed Big Black's violence with dance beats and heavy-metal riffs.

Among the most oppressive followers of Jesus Lizard's convoluted power-rock were Missouri's Dazzling Killmen (2), no less brutal but a little jazzier. The cross-fire between vocalist Nick Sakes and guitarist Tim Garrigan, and the rhythm section's jarring movement, molded the infernal atmospheres of Dig Out The Switch (1992). The band relished horror psychodramas of ferocious intensity, an art that culminated on Face Of Collapse (1994).

In Chicago, Jesus Lizard's main disciples were perhaps Shorty, led by guitarist Mark Shippy and vocalist Al Johnson, with the eerie violence of Thumb Days (1993).

Unsane (11), formed in New York by Jon's brother Chris Spencer and drummer Charlie Ondras, concocted a dissonant and violent form of rock'n'roll that borrowed the sheer impetus of hardcore but emptied it of any emotion and melody. The catastrophic riffs, hammering rhythms and uncontrolled vocals of Unsane (1991) performed glacial and relentless surgery on the body of a zombie. Cascades of atrocious sounds destabilized its songs and generated a form of hysterical tribalism. Compared with Sonic Youth, the music was spasmodically tragic, not calmly intellectual. Vincent Signorelli replaced Ondras (who had died prematurely) on Total Destruction (1994), another work drenched in superhuman angst, another bleak, claustrophobic, painful vision of subhuman life. Even compared to the extreme sound of Big Black, Unsane's music was a further step down the stairway to hell, and the damned weren't even crying anymore.

San Diego's Three Mile Pilot (2), a guitar-less trio of vocals, bass and drums led by singer Pall Jenkins (Paolo Zappoli), revived Jesus Lizard's post-hardcore dejection on Na Vucca Do Lupu (1992), a brutal and passionate work, and Chief Assassin to The Sinister (1994), a tortured, stark and obscure testament.

Kansas City's Season To Risk played similar heavy, tortured music on albums such as In A Perfect World (1995).

Los Angeles' Distorted Pony (1) delivered the gloomy, menacing, super-heavy, apocalyptic wall of noise of Punishment Room (1992), while Slug wed Big Black to an assortment of turntables and hip-hop rhythms, not to mention the monster assault of two basses, on Swingers (1993).

San Francisco-based Oxbow (3), fronted by nightmarish vocalist Eugene Robinson, concocted an insane free-form collage of atonal instruments, vocal rants, noise, punk energy and sheer nonsense on Fuckfest (1991) and especially King of the Jews (1992) and Serenade in Red (1996). After a long hiatus, An Evil Heat (2002) even included a 32-minute coda of musique concrete for distorted guitar and moribund groove, Glimmer Shine.

In New York, both Drunk Tank (1) with the bleak Drunk Tank (1991), and Cell, with Slo Blo (1992), further explored the edges of this style.

These bands increasingly mixed noise-rock, grunge and industrial music.

Between noise-rock and feedback-pop 1991-95

Several bands took advantage of the harmonic revolution of noise-rock to craft personal, introverted and disturbing styles.

Broc's Cabin (1991), by Florida's Rein Sanction, was bleak and ominous like a cross between voodoo and noise-rock.

Indiana's Antenna, formed by former Lemonheads' and Blake Babies' guitarist John Strohm, evolved into Velo-Deluxe (1), whose Superelastic (1994) better represented the leader's fusion of roots-rock, power-pop, the Velvet Underground and My Bloody Valentine.

In Minnesota, Polara (1), the project of 27 Various' guitarist Ed Ackerson, bridged late Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain's feedback-pop and the "Madchester" sound on Polara (1995).

In Los Angeles, Further (1) produced Sometimes Chimes (1994), which toyed with Dinosaur Jr-like noise-pop.

East Coast 1993-96

Later into the decade, a new generation of bands came around playing non-linear, dissonant song-oriented music, and North Carolina (namely, Chapel Hill) was its epicenter. Polvo (12), which were in many ways the leaders of this school, resurrected Television's guitar counterpoint, which straddled the line between neurosis and ecstasy, between western existentialism and eastern transcendentalism, but pushed it to the brink of cacophony and chaos. The effect was to give "atonal" a "subliminal" meaning. The intricate and repulsive guitar collisions of Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski propelled Cor-Crane Secret (1992) inwardly, while shifting and incoherent tempos lent the journey a Freudian intensity, and twisted melodies plunged the "stories" into the realm of Alice In Wonderland. A more erudite effort, Today's Active Lifestyles (1993) was, de facto, a series of dissonant micro-concertos, which in turn evoked a gallery of abstract miniatures, not unlike Captain Beefheart's masterpieces. Exploded Drawing (1996), possibly their masterpiece, perfected their manual of harmony. While the surface still sounded like a spastic version of Henry Cow, the nonchalant and detached way with which the players secretly toyed with elements of raga, blues and folk amounted to a jungle of improper signs, to a semiotic disaster of the same magnitude as Arto Lindsay's and Mayo Thompson's most heretical endeavors. The more careful arrangements of Shapes (1997) revealed that the scaffolding of their sonic kaleidoscope bore psychedelic stigmata. Shunning the over-extended progressive/acid format, Polvo advanced the concept of noise in the format of the pop song more than anyone else since Sonic Youth.

Boston boasted an equally original scene. Live Skull's vocalist Thalia Zedek and guitarist Chris Brokaw (ex-Codeine) formed Come (1) to indulge in noisy Royal Trux-ian blues jamming and neurotic Neil Young-ian ballads. Don't Ask Don't Tell (1994) was a collection of nightmarish streams of consciousness.

The Supreme Dicks (11) were among the most intriguing practitioners of the aesthetics that equates "creative" and "primitive". The theatrical bacchanals of The Unexamined Life (1993) managed to combine ideas from the Holy Modal Rounders, Kurt Weill and Lou Reed. That kind of drunk, dissonant folk music evolved towards the avantgarde and psychedelia on The Emotional Plague (1996), a vastly more ambitious work that resorted to sparse, dilated and warped structures.

Followers of Sonic Youth in and around Boston included Papas Fritas, Small Factory, New Radiant Storm King, Turkish Delight.

In Pennsylvania, Latimer's LP Title (1995) was typical of Sonic Youth's nation-wide influence.

Two of the most original bands were from Washington (and not coincidentally related to Unrest). Tsunami (1), the band of ebullient singer Jenny Toomey, played frantic and muddled roots-rock on Deep End (1993). Pitchblende (1), the band of guitarists Justin Chearno and Treiops Treyfid, molded a vehement and jagged attack on Kill Atom Smasher (1993).

Modernism 1993-95

Ohio's Brainiac (2) concocted a surreal hybrid of new wave and industrial music. Abandoning the punk-rock verve of their Devo-inspired debut album Smack Bunny Baby (1993), the short demented songs of Bonsai Superstar (1994), featuring new guitarist John Schmersal, revealed a lighter, gentler version of Pere Ubu, the Pixies and Sonic Youth. Chaotic and retro`, that album capitalized on those masters' innovations but, thanks to Tim Taylor's naive synthesizer and to a childish aesthetics, discarded the apocalyptic overtones. Hissing Prigs In Static Couture (1996) was a better organized madhouse, despite the relentless, frantic chaos.

Atlanta's Pineal Ventana offered a bold mixture of improvisation, tribal drumming, saxophone drones and edgy screaming on Living Soil (1995).

International noise-rock 1992-95

England was awash in Brit-pop, but still managed to deliver some of the most creative bands of the era.

Gallon Drunk (11) was one of the most aggressive and intimidating outfits of its time. You The Night And The Music (1992) served rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues played by a pack of rabid wolves, skewed tribal dances derailed by awkwardly distorted guitar and organ and by demonic changes of tempo and mood. The album revived the lascivious and sinister musical universe of Birthday Party, the Cramps and the Scientists, but in a more catastrophic setting, and amid mutant echoes of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bo Diddley. The slightly jazzier and more rational From The Heart Of Town (1993), featuring reed player Terry Edwards, turned that wild flight of the imagination into a style.

Therapy? (1) unleashed another brutal work, Nurse (1992), a trip in a Freudian maze.

The aesthetics of Jacob's Mouse (1) was even looser. Their No Fish Shop Parking (1992) was a cauldron of noise-rock styles.

The Faith Healers (1), featuring guitarist Tom Cullinan, imitated Pixies and Sonic Youth on Lido (1992).

Prolapse (1) specialized in angular and abrasive noise-rock, which on the early albums, such as Backsaturday (1995), sounded like vitriolic indictments of pop music.

Boyracer behaved like childish hellraisers on More Songs About Frustration And Self-Hate (1994), that contains brief songs played with full-throttle clumsiness and clownish nerdiness.

Rosa Mota unleashed the triple guitar assault of Wishful Sinking (1995).

Beatnik Filmstars messed with the traditional song format in amateurish ways.

The "Halifax school" in Canada was briefly a phenomenon. Representative albums were Love Tara (1993), by Eric's Trip (1), which included Rick White and Julie Doiron, Sloan's Smeared (1993), and Jale's Dreamcake (1994).

Switzerland's Sportsguitar, Italy's Uzeda, and Germany's Blumfeld were Continental bands influenced by noise-pop. The best one was perhaps Germany's 18th Dye, particularly on Tribute To A Bus (1995).