When The Rain Learned to Roar: Noh Salleh and Levi’s Grown-Up Grunge

Late 90s, Miri, Sarawak. The air is thick with monsoon heat and teenage restlessness. In his family's living room, a Sarawakian teenager sits cross-legged before a flickering television, the whirr of a VHS player cutting through the night.

On screen, Nirvana perform their now-mythic MTV Unplugged in New York set—raw, haunted, unapologetically unvarnished.

Beside him, a stack of CDs his brother has brought home: Mudhoney, more Nirvana, relics from a sound that felt like a secret.

At a time when airwaves were sugar-coated with Britney Spears, NSYNC and Westlife, this was the antithesis. No choreography. No gloss. Just distortion, denim and defiance.

The boy is Mohd Noh Salleh—now better known simply as Noh Salleh—and in that dim glow, something irreversible happens.

“Going back to the grunge days, I remember being introduced to music through my brother,” he reflects. “At the time, we didn’t even know what ‘grunge’ was.”

What he understood instead was freedom. The idea of being yourself, rather than following the commercial side of the industry. Anti-glam. Anti-pretence. Anti-everything that didn’t feel real.

It wasn’t just music. It was posture. It was thrifted flannel and loose-fit denim. It was the quiet rebellion of dressing for yourself.

When Noh later discovered Malaysian grunge legends Butterfingers, seeing their photos and silhouettes sealed the deal. The denim hung low, lived-in, effortless.

“That’s how impactful Butterfingers and the grunge movement were for me,” he says.

Not long after, he formed Hujan, the band that would soundtrack a generation with “Aku Skandal” and “Bila Aku Sudah Tiada.”

Cut to present day. A studio in Kuala Lumpur hums with feedback and anticipation. Noh stands at the mic—older, surer, but still wired with that same teenage voltage.

He’s dressed in Levi’s® Relaxed Fit Western Shirt, Sunset Drives Hayes Boxy Full Zip Jacket, Grunge Wash Roan Rogue Red Tab™ Vintage T-Shirt, White 578™ Baggy Jeans and Tough As Boots.

The look is pure Grown-Up Grunge: generous silhouettes, washed textures, denim that feels earned rather than engineered.

As the opening chords crash in, he is in his element. More than Hujan’s frontman, Noh has become one of the defining voices of Malaysia’s indie rock scene, branching into introspective solo projects that stretch beyond the expected.

Music, for him, is still expression. And so is fashion. “During that era, we were all searching for the best way to represent ourselves—and that’s how grunge became such an important part of our lives.”

It makes him the perfect face for Levi’s® Spring/Summer 2026 campaign—a movement that gathers nine local personalities, from Belle Sisoski and Ashley Lau to MonoLoque and Dahlia Nadirah, Awang Samrow, CHUBB-E, Lunadira and Arif Kamarudin, each reframing grunge on their own terms. This isn’t costume. It’s character.

Levi’s® has always understood the language of rebellion. From the birth of rock ’n’ roll to Bruce Springsteen’s iconic Born in the U.S.A. album cover—shot in a pair of Levi’s® 501® jeans—the brand has been stitched into pop culture’s most seismic shifts.

When Pearl Jam and Soundgarden took flannel and faded denim global, Levi’s® was there too: democratic, durable, defiant.

Now, as grunge surges back into the fashion bloodstream, this revival feels less like nostalgia and more like necessity. In an era hyper-curated by algorithms, the rawness of grunge is radical again.

The SS26 collection doesn’t romanticise the past; it reframes it. Baggy 578™ jeans skim the floor with intent. Western shirts soften into second skin. Jackets box out the noise. It’s grown-up, but it hasn’t grown tame.

And Noh? He is the bridge. The teenager in Miri who once stared at a grainy VHS screen is now soundtracking a new chapter. For veterans, it’s a homecoming.

For the new generation, it’s discovery. For everyone else, it’s a reminder: style is strongest when it’s personal, and rebellion never really goes out of fashion.

The rain still falls. But now, it roars.

Levi’s SS26 collection for men and women are available in all Levi’s stores across Malaysia and online now.

*Photos courtesy of Levi’s.