Then, as the music continued to get more interesting, Weiland began his descent into drug addiction, cycling through jail and rehab innumerable times. So not only had they gotten better, but circumstances made them seem better too, even if many critics still clung to their blind hatred of the band. By their second album, 1994's Purple, they had not only gotten better and weirder than expected, they'd also had the benefit of being surrounded by bands that really were corporate alt-rock rip-offs.
Some of this was brought on by themselves, particularly in the early days when they sounded like a mix of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and relied on macho bluster in their videos, but critics and rockists singled them out as the one band that typified how the establishment was going to sell out the alt-rock revolution that Nirvana kicked off in 1991, the year punk broke.
Some bands get no respect, no matter what they do, but Stone Temple Pilots suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune more than most.