Grotus

With their eccentric blend of disparate musical styles, San Francisco's Grotus fit in extremely well with the 1990s freewheeling alt-rock spirit — so well, and so freewheeling, in fact, that hardly anyone remembers their existence. Birthed along with the decade itself, the quartet comprised of Lars Fox (vocals/samples), Adam Tanner (guitar/bass/samples), John Carson (bass/samples), and Bruce Boyd recorded several albums (including 1991's Brown, 1993's Slow Motion Apocalypse, and 1996's Mass) featuring heavily electronic/industrial distortions of alt-rock and metal — all topped with often inscrutable, nearly dadaist lyrics decried in a schizophrenic array of voices. That Grotus managed to attract a small cult following almost goes without saying, but mass acceptance was probably never an option, so, after being juggled by a number of well-intentioned but equally perplexed independent labels, the group's career (also filled with several EPs and remix sets) finally ground to a halt in the late '90s, along with the alt-rock era's enthusiasm for anything so quirky.