‘Nevermind’ was the album which kick-started a revolution; ‘In Utero’ was the ultimate – if unintended – end of it all; ‘Bleach’, however, was where it all began for a certain band from Aberdeen, Washington. This was the first the public would hear of Nirvana, yet it gave little clue as to how astronomical their rise would be in the years to come.

Before opening the band’s famed MTV Unplugged set with ‘About A Girl’ in New York in 1993, Kurt Cobain uttered the following words: ‘This is off our first record. Most people don’t own it’. And whether that was intended as a jibe at those who jumped on the Nirvana bandwagon after the unparalleled success of Nevermind or was merely a statement of truth, it tells us one crucial fact: Bleach was not a huge commercial success in the first instance.

The release of ‘Nevermind’ itself was arguably the biggest factor in propelling the debut album towards the platinum certification it enjoys today. Up to 1991, Bleach had sold a mere 40,000 copies in North America. Today, that figure stands in excess of one million. So in spite of its somewhat delayed discovery on a wider scale, Bleach’s genius shone through in the end and it stands as just as much of a masterpiece as either of Nirvana’s other two studio albums.

It also just so happens to be the heaviest, bleakest and – most importantly – grungiest of their three albums, with more ear-violating guitar screeching and coarse yowling from Kurt than on any of the later material. But his ever-underrated ability as a guitarist shines through the gloom on every track here. The brilliantly dark and somewhat disturbing second song on the record, Floyd The Barber, intertwines these elements to perfection, setting us up superbly for About A Girl, Bleach’s biggest hit by far. Interestingly though, it was the release of the acoustic version of the song from MTV Unplugged which earned it such great admiration.

Following that, School and Love Buzz – a cover of a song by 60s/70s Dutch rock band Shocking Blue – bring the album exploding into life, Cobain at his scintillating best with more neat guitar solos and a dose of that unmistakable, weirdly endearing semi-shrieking of his. From here Bleach takes a turn for the irate, even aggressive. Negative Creep is three minutes of unrelenting rage which spills over onto track eight, Scoff. In fact, the rage only truly subsides when we reach Big Cheese, the penultimate song on the record. That said, all the hallmarks of Nirvana’s grunge innovation are plain to be heard on this strangely melodic number.

Bleach is the band’s shortest album and that only works in their favour, allowing Kurt, Krist and Dave to create an LP which manages to squeeze out all the grungey goodness you could ever dream of. Nevermind and In Utero may have earned far wider critical acclaim but this unrefined debut epitomises everything that Nirvana were about. You could argue that its raw, harsh-on-the-ears nature and how it restricted the success of the album was a good thing in the long run. For despite Cobain’s well documented aversion to mainstream music, later albums brought his beliefs to the fore. This was a band that went about challenging the status quo and pulled it off.

Ultimately if Bleach had had the commercial appeal to be a great success at the time, there may never have been a Nevermind, the record which changed the face of rock music forever, regardless of whether that was the intention or not. Bleach brought Nirvana in under the radar, thus preventing them from peaking too soon, but it can still go down as the album that started a musical revolution.

This year, as it prepares to celebrate its 25^th anniversary, Bleach still pales in comparison to its two successors – In Utero has sold three times as many copies, Nevermind six times – but is just as crucial and valuable as those two legendary records to how Nirvana were able to popularise and change the alternative rock genre forever. No reissue has been planned as yet but 2014 would be as apt a time as any to celebrate the album that captures the true sound of the world’s greatest grunge band doing what they did best: whatever the hell they wanted to.