Arise, Bands From the 90s! Arise!

From the Cocteau Twins to Bowery Electric to the late, great Gravediggaz, we could really use some bands that were either born or broken in the 90s.

So I injected Metromix with a potent dose of the decade’s greatest noises. Here’s a sampler to sway your mind.

Cocteau Twins

(Photo:Bob Berg/Getty Images

Although this Scottish trio careened from stark gothtronica to lush dream-pop throughout the ’80s and ’90s, it is 1990’s “Heaven or Las Vegas” that marked Cocteau Twins’ peak of accessibility.

Breathed into spiraling life by Elizabeth Fraser’s uncanny ululations and buttressed by guitarist Robin Guthrie’s gear-headed atmospherics and bassist Simon Raymonde’s rumbling backbone, Cocteau Twins dazzled on alt-rock classics like “Treasure,” “Blue Bell Knoll” and “Victorialand” in the ’80s, then crossed over on the strength of “Heaven or Las Vegas” and subsequent ’90s efforts like “Four Calendar Cafe” and “Milk and Kisses.”

Reunions rumors have come and gone, but the Twins still remain beautifully enigmatic and heartbreakingly distant. For now.

Bowery Electric

(Photo:Beggars Banquet Records)

A virtually unknown band that mashed rock, drone, hip-hop and much more in arresting, captivating ways, guitarist Lawrence Chandler and bassist Martha Schwendener’s Bowery Electric could reform tomorrow and the world probably wouldn’t even notice. But it should.

Spiraling guitar epics like “Next to Nothing” from their self-titled 1995 debut, skewed the genes of grunge and trip-hop in strange and fascinating ways, while their 1996 effort “Beat” was nearly as compelling as DJ Shadow’s more popularly lauded “Endtroducing,” which came out the same year. By the time Bowery Electric got to their rocktronic 2000 masterpiece “Lushlife,” the world had moved on.

But a decade later, Chandler and Schwendener’s dizzying, experimental compositions remain as challenging yet accessible as ever.

Gravediggaz

(Photo:David Corio)

A stone-cold supergroup featuring Wu-Tang Clan’s unhinged genius RZA, producer par excellence Prince Paul and rappers Too Poetic and Frukwan, Gravediggaz anticipated our currently terrorized pop-cultural landscape with graphic and often hilarious horrorcore hip-hop.

In visceral, spine-shaking tracks like “1-800-Suicide,” “Blood Brothers” and the sublime “Here Come the Gravediggaz” from the group’s 1994 debut “6 Feet Deep,” Gravediggaz married everything from sci-fi, horror, street knowledge and humor to portray a world slowly losing its way and mind.

After that, the fragmenting supergroup released two less influential efforts—1997’s “The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel” and 2003’s “Nightmare in A-Minor”—the latter after Too Poetic passed away from colon cancer. But Gravediggaz’ nightmarish legacy lives on, in a bloodthirsty world they correctly presaged. MORE @ METROMIX