Top Ten Best Grunge Albums Not Released by the Big 4 of Grunge

It was a tough choice between this one and Core, at the end of the day I took Purple over for a few reasons, the first one for aging better and having a better musical composition (for my opinion at least) that Core had, the second one for being more of a grunge album than Core, since Core was going on alternative metal/glam metal places at the time (not something that makes the album less good, just a personal choice)
Purple is my favorite Stone Temple Pilots album and one that always come up there when people talk about grunge albums, truly an enduring masterpiece that has lasted for a really long time, and one that deserves it

At first I wasn't sure to include this album since it was made by the members of Pearl Jam (and Eddie Vedder as a guest vocalist) with Chris Cornell in tribute to Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone, but after thinking about it, this album deserves to be here, not only by it's quality but also by what it represents, a completely honest an emotional tribute to a friend who sadly passed away at a really young age, the instrumentation is some of the best ever made, at par with Ten and Vs, Chris Cornell was at his peak with his voice during it's era, lyrically it's really emotional and goes along with the sad yet hopeful tone of the album, not to mention it helped to set the tone of what we will know as Pearl Jam a few months later

A lot of people would tell you that Stone Temple Pilots deserves to be the 5th big of grunge, and I respect that but personally I feel The Smashing Pumpkins deserve more of that spot, a few people will tell you that Siamese Dream is more "shoegaze" than "grunge" (which makes sense by the guitar tone and production) but personally I'm picking it as an album from the genre
Not only that but I genuinely believe Siamese Dream is the best grunge album of all time, even better than the likes of Nevermind, Ten, Superunknown and Dirt (still great albums tho), Siamese Dream might arguably have the best guitar tone I have ever heard on a grunge album, Billy Corgan's voice evokes a lot of energy put into the music, the songs are heavy yet melodic and performed in such an emotional way that really sells out the music, a masterpiece that deserves to be put in the same discussion along Nevermind and Ten

Probably the heaviest album on the list, I was doubting about this one since people might call it an alternative/sludge metal album (mainly by the heavy tone of it), but since Melvins also played a really important paper during the grunge days, I decided to put them into the list with my personal favorite album by them, Houdini

In my opinion much better than purple

Screaming Trees might be the most underrated band from the grunge period, they are kind of similar to Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots, they are soft but they definitely get for what grunge was going to, they feel really genuine with their style of music and represent one of the best sounds during the grunge lifetime, sadly they are not as discussed as they should
Also shoutout to Mark Lanegan for being arguably the most underrated singer in the scene

Of course Mudhoney deserved to be on this list too and with a good reason, they were the pioneers of grunge, they might not be the most popular, the very first or the most "notorious" act of this scene, but they managed to give grunge the sound that was going to be well known for the rest of the decade, I decided to pick Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge as their way to go album, their EP Superfuzz Bigmuff come close too, but since it was an EP I guessed this one was the most eligible choice

It was a hard choice between this one and Veruca Salt's American Thighs to pick in this spot, but personally I picked Rubberneck as the last spot on the top 10, they were probably the band from this list (excluding SP and STP) to be closer to mainstream success with their track Possum Kingdom, and they deserved that attention for representing the last real energy of grunge during a period where it was fading away from being considered as the sound of the future, one great gem from a great scene