I agree a lot with what Travis Bickle is saying here in regards to Stadium Rock (Arena Rock) I really can't see any link between that and a band like Alice in Chains. What is Stadium Rock? Well I'm sure you all know, but its basically music designed for the big arena surprisingly enough
Queen were probably one of the first true stadium rock bands, as that was roughly when the term was first used as a serious description, bands such as Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin etc had been coined it before but I'd say Queen kicked the whole thing off. Stadium rock especially in the 70s and 80s were normally bands with vocalists that really could perform live and the musicians knew their stuff and could play some complex stuff when required. A lot of prog bands didn't make great stadium rock outfits due to the complexities of their sound, which is why stadium rock was such fertile ground for pomp rock bands like Styx and Kansas, along with AOR giants of the 70s Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp and Eagles, and then later artists like U2 and Dire Straits to name a few. The heavier end of the spectrum was also well represented in Aerosmith, Van Halen, Kiss and later Iron Maiden would fill in that category. It was around the mid 1980s that the quality stadium rock artists fell by the wayside (Toto, Journey, Survivor and Boston etc) and hair metal bands led by a revived Aerosmith and newbies such as Gun n Roses and Bon Jovi etc stepped into the empty void.
Now if anything, grunge like punk and the NWOBHM before it were the antithesis of stadium rock, these were grassroots movements that worked with stripped down musical arrangements and image and were completely opposed to the slick sounding AOR acts before them. I really don't see how Alice in Chains would appeal to a stadium rock fan!!! I'm a huge stadium rock fan and really don't like Alice in Chains that much. The only grunge band that had any type of stadium rock appeal were Pearl Jam and
Ten was the perfect evidence of that.
Cross-genre appeal is often different things to different people, for somebody into metal its usually looked upon as something dodgy and to be viewed at with caution, Funk Metal and especially Nu-Metal, but certain metal bands such as Between the Buried and Me have made it very acceptable, whereas to a more general music listener, cross-genre appeal is often seen as something positive, as I said before Nirvana were probably the only grunge band with any cross-genre appeal thanks to their well hidden pop melodies that seemed to run through a most of their songs and appealed to people into all different types of music.
I did plan to go on here, but I'm now off to clean the carpet