5 ’90s Rock Bands You Might Have Forgotten

How many of these five 1990s rock bands do you remember?

If the answer is “none,” you’re likely not alone. Almost all of them were quickly signed by major record labels before being dropped after just one album.

But that doesn’t mean that one album was a complete disaster. On most occasions, it was simply a symptom of a major label feeding frenzy as they tried to figure out what was next as the grunge era started to fade into oblivion.

Here are five ’90s rock bands you may have forgotten that deserve some attention today,

1. Lifter

If you were in your early 20s and trying to figure out your life in the mid-1990s, Lifter were the band for you.

The Los Angeles alternative rock act released a handful of singles on various smaller labels after forming in 1992. They would eventually catch the attention of Interscope, which signed the band in hopes of releasing their full-length debut.

Lifter would get off to an inauspicious start with the label. According to AllMusic.com, Interscope demanded vocalist and guitarist Mike Coulter head to rehab for heroin addiction.

Coulter used that time to channel his frustrations of heartbreak and struggles with addiction into the lyrics for Melinda: Everything Was Beautiful & Nothing Hurt.

The album is a brutally honest look at growing up, failing and then trying to do it all over again in hopes of succeeding a second time.

The song “402” hits on the desire for the comforts of your parents’ house after realizing you messed up after moving out on your own. “Something Borrowed” attempts to be hopeful after your first serious relationship goes south.

Melinda: Everything Was Beautiful & Nothing Hurt is full of raw emotion, but maybe it was a little too emo when it came out in 1996. Interscope moved on from Lifter and the band broke up in 1998.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Coulter continued to struggle with drug addiction before taking a break from music altogether. Years later, he would get sober and record new music as a solo artist.

Lifter bass player Jeffrey Sebelia would find success outside of the music industry as a fashion designer. He competed on and won the third season of the reality TV competition series, Project Runway, in 2006.

2. Puzzle Gut

Puzzle Gut may be the hair metal version of the Steve Buscemi “how do you do, fellow kids?” meme.

In the late 1980s, hair metal/hard rock act Baton Rouge from (you guessed it) Louisiana broke onto the scene with a sound that likely would have made the band a household name if they were around for the first half of the decade. At the same time, similarly sounding but slightly more successful XYZ also arrived.

But instead of continuing to beat the same tired hair metal drum as grunge took hold, members of these bands started to splinter off into other acts that sounded completely different in an attempt to stick with the times.

Puzzle Gut were an edgy take on grunge with a modest punk influence and featured members of both Baton Rouge and XYZ. It was enough to help the band ink a deal with Interscope and release the self-titled debut in 1997.

When it came time to write lyrics for the record, Puzzle Gut looked to move as far as possible from its members’ hair metal past. The band’s most recognizable song, “The Cow,” features the lyrics “I like the cow” endlessly repeated over the course of four minutes.

While nonsensical lyrics certainly had a moment in the ’90s, Puzzle Gut proved to be a one-and-done project. The act broke up not long after the release of their lone album.

3. Radish

Before singer/songwriter Ben Kweller made a name for himself as an indie rock solo artist, he was fronting post-grunge act Radish.

The band self-released two albums, Hello in 1994 and Dizzy in 1996, before being scooped up by Universal, which put out Radish’s Restraining Bolt under its Mercury Records imprint in 1997. The album took a slightly more melodic approach to the post-grunge sound, albeit with plenty of fuzzy guitars so as not to stray too far from the sound of the ’90s.

Even with the band being comprised of teenagers (Kweller was just 15 at the time), Universal was ready to strap a rocket to their backs. Radish performed on nearly every late-night talk show in a short amount of time. They also played several festivals and had their own U.S. headlining tour with the band Lit as an opener.

Despite major backing from their record label, Radish never caught on like Universal had hoped at the time. The band recorded one more album that never saw the light of day as they were released from the label.

Things worked out for Kweller in the end, thanks to some smart money moves as a teenager. According to the 2004 book The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, which looked at how major record labels courted and quickly dropped acts in the ’90s, Kweller invested his advance money from Universal in the stock market and sought out various real estate ventures.

He released his seventh studio album, Cover the Mirrors, in May of 2025. The album is a tribute to his 16-year-old son, Dorian, who died in a car accident in 2023.

4. The Refreshments

The Refreshments garnered attention in 1996 thanks to their song “Banditos” off the Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy album. The Tempe, Arizona band had a knack for employing catchy hooks and pop culture references, including a shoutout to the fictional Star Trek character Jean-Luc Picard.

Listening to the album today makes it sound like your typical post-grunge alternative rock. But at the time, fans of the genre couldn’t get enough of this stuff.

The Refreshments attempted to keep their momentum going the following year. The band is responsible for the theme song for the animated series, King of the Hill, which debuted in 1997.

That same year, The Refreshments would release their second album, The Bottle & Fresh Horses. Unfortunately, this one didn’t produce a hit single like the band’s debut, leaving them mostly lost in the shuffle among similar-sounding acts.

To make matters worse, inner turmoil started to fracture relationships within The Refreshments. Eventually, two members exited the band, with the remainder of the group carrying on as Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers.

5. WANK

Before you lazily claim these guys are a Social Distortion ripoff, you should know they have the official stamp of approval of Mike Ness. Do you really want to argue with Mike Ness?

WANK were around the California pop-punk scene in the mid-1990s. Unlike most of the other names coming out of the region at that time, the band seemed more than comfortable leaning more heavily into the pop portion of the genre.

The punk part of their formula was more Social Distortion-esque with plenty of rock in the mix.

WANK tapped Ness to produce their major label debut, Get a Grip on Yourself, which was released by Maverick in 1998. Tracks such as “Larry Brown” and “Mickey” sound like they’re long-lost Social Distortion recordings. “White Lightning” leans more toward The Clash.

Not bad for musical influences, right?

WANK spent the summer of 1998 touring the U.S. as one of the acts on the Vans Warped Tour. Just when things seemed to be going their way, the band’s fortunes changed in a hurry.

Less than a year later, WANK was dropped from Maverick. In 2000, lead singer and bass player Bobby Amodeo was diagnosed with cancer. The rest of the band’s members started to seek out other projects.

Amodeo told OC Weekly that he did nearly five years of chemotherapy treatments as he battled leukemia before it was determined his cancer was in remission. With Amodeo healthy and the rest of the band looking at some open time on their schedules, WANK reunited in 2016 to release an EP.

The band dropped a new full-length album, Turn it Up, in 2024 and continues to play live shows today.