Hard rock Styx helped further cement heavy rock in the Midwest as a form of stadium rock. In 1978, Van Halen emerged from the Los Angeles music scene with a sound based around the skills of lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen. He popularised a guitar-playing technique of two-handed hammer-ons and pull-offs called tapping, showcased on the song "Eruption" from the album "Van Halen", which was highly influential in re-establishing hard rock as a popular genre after the punk and disco explosion, while also redefining and elevating the role of electric guitar. The opening years of the 1980s saw a number of changes
Hard rock (1990), which contained a bluesy classic rock sound and sold five million copies. In 1992, Def Leppard followed up 1987's "Hysteria" with "Adrenalize", which went multi-platinum, spawned four Top 40 singles and held the number one spot on the US album chart for five weeks. While these few hard rock bands managed to maintain success and popularity in the early part of the decade, alternative forms of hard rock achieved mainstream success in the form of grunge in the US and Britpop in the UK. This was particularly evident after the success of Nirvana's "Nevermind" (1991), which combined elements of