The emergence of grunge music in the early 1990s was born as a reaction to the hard rock and arena band decadence of the 1980s. Bands like Nirvana, who embraced the ideals of both punk and metal, married the two genres and emerged out of the Pacific Northwest to blow up the charts, inspiring an emergence of indie labels like Sub-Pop and K-Records. Ironically, the image caught on and became the mainstream sound for this period, and its popularity took a fatal toll on Kurt Cobain, one of this generation's most powerful spokespeople.