Silverchair

With Kurt Cobain dead and Brit pop swaggering on the horizon, Australian alternative rockers Silverchair made one final stand for the grunge movement in the mid-1990s with their youthful, thrashing, anthems of angst. Formed in 1992 by schoolfriends Ben Gillies, Chris Joannou and Daniel Johns in Newcastle, New South Wales, the band won a high profile national competition for unsigned artists and soon had a host of labels bidding for their signatures. Recorded in nine days when the trio were still only 15, debut album Frogstamp (1995) was a raw blast of adolescent energy, that topped the charts in their homeland, reached Number 9 in the US and went on to sell over three million copies. Its success led to a grander, fuller sound on follow-ups Freak Show (1997) and Neon Ballroom (1999), but Johns' lyrics remained typically dark and morbid, with tales of suicide, disease and alienation. The band toured with Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Offspring, but Johns suffered with anorexia, anxiety and arthritis and was forced to take lengthy breaks. They returned with the album Young Modern (2007) and won a string of awards for Australian Number 1 single Straight Lines before going their separate ways in 2011.

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