Run of the mill wanna-be punk? I'd say that would be your bias getting in the way of making some sort of informed judgement. If anything, they were "wanna-be" Melvins on Bleach, "wanna-be" Pixies on Nevermind, and I'm not sure what they were going for on In Utero but it ended up sounding like a Steve Albini record.
They didn't kill music, they brought the alternative scene that had been building since the early 80's into the mainstream, where it was subsequently bastardized, and made underground music spiral away from its guitar-oriented post-punk tendencies and towards... prog.
So, what I'm saying, is Nirvana gave us post-rock. That might be a bit of a stretch, since Laughing Stock, arguably the first post-rock record, was recorded in '91, but I do sincerely believe that with "grunge" and all the alternative rock associated with it in the mainstream, those who wanted to reject the mainstream had to turn to its polar opposite.
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