Hard as it may be to imagine in these genre-blurring times, four decades ago, music fans were as siloed and separated as the genre sections of a record store. Back then, a rock fan wandering into the country or “soul” section (and vice-versa) was often like wandering into a neighborhood where people would look at you funny. Even within rock, the subcultures were divided — and none more so than the punk and heavy metal crowds.
Of course, it was absurd, because the genres were so similar — loud guitars and aggression — and because most of the musicians in both crowds initially started playing music because of bands like Kiss and Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. But for the most part, they hated each other like rival gangs: A punk musician joining a metal band would be mocked mercilessly by his former friends. It was actually a big deal when Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine had a Sex Pistols sticker on his guitar in the mid-‘80s, and when Metallica covered a Misfits song.
But those boundaries broke down quickly in the following years, and Soundgarden had more than a little to do with it: Their 1987 debut EP, “Screaming Life,” was the most vivid and convincing fusion of punk and hard rock that had come to date. Other bands had done it before (including pioneering Seattle rock band Green River, which split the difference by evolving into Pearl Jam and Mudhoneyj) and it would be the basis of the sound of the then-nascent grunge genre, but Soundgarden were the first band where it truly felt like both genres were proudly equal in their collective DNA
