There's nothing wrong with being a fan of mainstream rock, punk, and metal. The catchiest songs are often the ones we like the most, and the underground can sometimes feel like a pretentious street-cred fencing match. At the same time, plenty of rock's big names touch on enough incendiary subject matter that even the most basic of metal fans is still edgier than your average pop listener. But in the shifting age of Internet hype and streaming services, finding interesting new music is more and more the responsibility of the fan, and limiting one's self to only mainstream rock means you can miss out on some incredible jams.
Case in point, though 2019 is shaping up to be a huge year for much-anticipated mainstream albums -- Rammstein, Slipknot, and Tool, to name three -- it's also proving an incredibly fertile year for the underground. Every week of 2019, more and more records are released that are changing their given niches of rock. And rather than recount how no one expected their success years from now, we really ought to celebrate them today.
Here are ten underground albums that even the most mainstream rock fans need to know about...