[Sethomas]

Not for as long as they're broken up?

Zelda's cuntery aside, STP are a great band. The whole "they sound too much like (insert anyone else)" shit is baseless for a number of reasons, mostly on account of parallel evolution. The Seattle scene listened to Led Zeppelin in their youngin' days, so did STP. In their early years they made all kinds of crazy shit with all types of sounds (you have to listen to their Mighty Joe Young tracks to understand), but the only songs that made it onto Core were the ones that the industry knew would sell. This happened to be, at the time, their songs that sounded like grunge. Hence,
they were a great band that got screwed over by their marketers. This would have been a fault to them if they hadn't split off from this by forming their sophomore album, Purple, which is IMO flawless and distinct from any other sound of its day. I think they could have made Tiny Music much better just by adding a little more variety, but with #4 they got back to their roots. Yeah, #4 was a mediocre album, but their last original album is another that's near perfect AND it combines their full spectrum of song types.

What makes them great is that they were far and away the most versatile band of the 90s. Just by judging from melodies, no other band since them could go from Dead and Bloated to Lady Picture Show to Coma without sucking.