Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil discussed the possibility of there being a new rock movement similar to Grunge in a new Loudwire interview.
“I hope so. It’s really hard to anticipate that. Obviously the success of the grunge and Seattle scene really took a lot of people by surprise, that’s why it became big news. People were kind of looking one way and then out came Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney. That connects specifically with Nirvana’s success. It caught a lot of people by surprise. There was a huge audience, which consisted of all of us, the music we were listening to. We were listening to bands on SST, Sub Pop. We were listening to a lot of indie rap. There was a lot of indie stuff going on, alt rock and with rap and the main scene was looking elsewhere. They were looking elsewhere for their hard rock and they were looking elsewhere for their pop. They were ignoring millions of fans that were not buying records by major labels.
They were buying indie stuff and trading in mixtapes. So when Nirvana came out it was a demographic and a fan base that the record companies seemed to be missing or ignoring. I think perhaps that can occur again. Things are really splintered. There seems to be so many bands and some of them are just brilliant and they’re not getting heard or recognized because they are lost in a sea of other brilliant bands. And there’s also, amongst all the brilliant bands, there’s a lot of crap out there but that’s what happens. There’s just so much talent both with players and songwriters and there are some great ideas, and some not so great ideas. But there’s a lot of talent out there either way. I think at some point, something will come together and the focus will be drawn to another particular artist or a particular movement. Anything can happen. It’s hard to say what and how.”
