Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil recently discussed the band's influence on other iconic Seattle rock acts as one of the very first groups to emerge on the grunge scene.

Thayil specifically focused on Nirvana and Alice in Chains, pointing out the impact Soundgarden had on each of the bands. "I remember being at a DOA show in Seattle with Jerry and Ben Shepherd, who wasn't in the band yet," he told Radio.com. "And Jerry told me he was trying to figure out 'Nothing to Say.' He said, 'What do you do there? It sounds really heavy and low.'

"And I said, 'Oh, I use a tuning called drop-D. You take the E string and drop it down a whole step.' And he goes, 'You’re kidding!' [laughs] And it's common knowledge that at the time, Alice in Chains were more of a boogie-slash-glam-pop band in the vein of what was going on in LA, like a Poison or early Bon Jovi or Motley Crue-ish thing. Our manager also managed them, and the next time she handed us a demo of theirs, it was highly different than what they had done half-a-year earlier."

Kim continued, "Like, 'Holy s--t! This sounds like they wrote a whole bunch of 'Nothing to Say's!' Then they did 'Facelift,' and, God, there's some amazing songs on that."

When it comes to Nirvana, the axeman noted that Kurt Cobain and co's early efforts basically sounded like "a junior Sundgarden." "Nirvana, later on they started doing more pop stuff like 'About a Girl,' but originally Nirvana kind of sounded like a junior Melvins or a junior Soundgarden," he said. "They were certainly fans of the Melvins and they were fans of us. Primarily because of the singing. Like, hey, you can have melodic lead vocals over these distorted, slowed-down punk rock grooves! So those were the primary influences. The drop-D thing and the melodic vocals."

Soundgarden are currently planning to make a raw-sounding effort as a follow-up to their latest studio release, 2012's "King Animal."

Nirvana wish they were even close to as good as Soundgarden.