And that's what made the group an unprecedented multi-platinum sensation. While Nirvana's ideology was indie rock and their melodies were pop, the sonic rush of their records and live shows merged post-industrial white noise with heavy metal grind. They covered Vaselines songs, they revived new wave cuts by Devo, and leader Kurt Cobain relentlessly pushed his favorite bands - whether it was the art punk of the Raincoats or the country-fried hardcore of the Meat Puppets - as if his favorite records were always more important than his own music. While their sound was equal parts Black Sabbath (as learned by fellow Washington underground rockers the Melvins) and Cheap Trick, Nirvana's aesthetics were strictly indie rock. Nirvana popularized punk, post-punk, and indie rock, unintentionally bringing them into the American mainstream like no other band to date. After the band's second album, 1991's Nevermind, nothing was ever quite the same, for better and for worse. Prior to Nirvana, alternative music was consigned to specialty sections of record stores, and major labels considered it to be, at the very most, a tax write-off.
