Hole formed in Los Angeles in 1989 around Courtney Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson, becoming one of the defining alternative rock bands of the 1990s. Live Through This (1994) is the raw, devastating classic; Celebrity Skin (1998) is its polished pop-rock counterpart. Shop Hole vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Hole formed in Los Angeles in 1989 around Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson. Their second album Live Through This was released on April 12, 1994 - one week after Courtney Love's husband Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) died by suicide. Bassist Kristen Pfaff died from a heroin overdose on June 16, 1994, two months after the album's release. Melissa Auf der Maur joined as the new bassist that summer. The band's third album Celebrity Skin (1998) marked a stylistic shift toward more polished pop rock. The band went on hiatus in 2002 and Love released a Hole album Nobody's Daughter (2010) with an entirely different lineup (without Erlandson or Schemel), which is sometimes considered a Love solo album.
Hole's sound combines alternative rock, grunge, punk rock, pop rock, and noise rock with Love's distinctive raw, confrontational vocal delivery and the band's signature feminist alternative rock aesthetic. Their work is widely cited as one of the defining 1990s alternative rock acts and as a foundational influence on subsequent generations of women-led rock.
Original DGC pressings of Live Through This and Celebrity Skin are widely collected. Multiple anniversary editions of Live Through This have been released.
Listeners new to Hole typically start with Live Through This (1994) or Celebrity Skin (1998).
