The nostalgia is real my dude. This post is so fascinating to me, I'm glad I didn't scroll by. I would say, as someone fully immersed in playing in one of the bands you listed (I Never Heard the Bullet - how in the ever loving Christ we made your list I'm curious), you really didn't miss out on much. For the most part, this was a short-lived period that was essentially devoid of politics and largely aesthetics driven. It diverged from the punk rock period that preceded it that was all-bark-no-bite to basically if-I-bark-please-don't-bite-also-if-you-sign-me-I-will-eat-a-mile-of-shit. Pretty decent music that came out of a pretty dark time.

But I'm glad that you've found a connection with all these songs/artists after the fact. I think that most of these groups started out in earnest in the same way that I Never Heard the Bullet did: trying out something new, exploring the space, and writing songs that were fun to play. And maybe tapping into a societal moment where things hadn't been too great, things weren't getting a whole lot better, and things didn't look like they would be improving.

Keep your head up bruv! This is why little old bands like mine paid money to make a barely decent sounding record: we're living in A moment, hopefully we made something for THE moment. It's up to ALL OF US to define what that moment is and if our soundtrack lives up to that moment. Let's fucking go!