With their detuned guitars, plodding tempos, permanently downcast expressions, and hardware-store dress code, Soundgarden looked every bit the “grunge” part, at least on first glance. If your first introduction came, for instance, via the image of frontman Chris Cornell baring his chest on a dimly lit soundstage in the video for “Loud Love,” you could easily mistake Soundgarden for a bunch of oafs wading in the same tarpit where the brontosaur remains of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin lay fossilized. In fact, at points on their 1989 sophomore album/major-label debut Louder Than Love, Soundgarden came off as a ham-fisted Zep/Sabbath mashup.
Clearly, the band underwent a period of profound growth sometime prior to recording Badmotorfinger, the 1991 follow-up that captures the band clicking on all cylinders. In its breadth and execution, Badmotorfinger dramatically surpasses the band's previous work. (Just don’t judge by the even more oafish video for leadoff single “Outshined”). The album also sustains a level of focus, cohesion, and intensity that the band’s later, more varied albums lack. It is also the moment where Soundgarden’s unique four-way interplay comes into alignment in earnest, along with their collective sense of songcraft and ability to create atmosphere.
In the oversized coffee table booklet that accompanies the seven-disc “super deluxe” version of this reissue, three dozen musicians offer their recollections, including Henry Rollins, Les Claypool, Vernon Reid, Kirk Hammett, Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover, Krist Novoselic, Tom Morello, Steve Von Till, etc, etc. High praise even comes from ancestral giants like Zeppelin leader Jimmy Page, Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, and Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson. The mental image of Lifeson cranking Badmotorfinger with his kids, as suggested by his notes, is probably the most endearing. Sadly, though, Mudhoney’s Mark Arm doesn't re-tell the story of how, on hearing the final mix for the first time, he sent the band a postcard with the disparaging note: “Fuck, you guys sound like Rush now.”
Though Louder Than Love cemented the band’s appeal with metal audiences, Soundgarden had first struck a national chord among college radio deejays who were keyed-in on the band’s underground pedigree. After working with the iconic independent label Sup Pop on their debut EP Screaming Life in 1987, Soundgarden initially turned down major label offers to release their debut full-length, 1988’s Ultramega OK, on SST, the venerated indie imprint founded by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn. Those two releases in particular reflected the band’s affinity for underground/post-punk acts like Hüsker Dü, Bad Brains, and Sonic Youth.
In the new Badmotorfinger liners, Jello Biafra likens Soundgarden to a cross between Zeppelin and Killing Joke. But it’s not like the post-punk influences jump out at you on Badmotorfinger. That’s because, by that point, Chris Cornell and lead guitarist Kim Thayil had combined their individual guitar approaches into a complex latticework that remains somewhat inscrutable even as it grips you. For every Badmotorfinger passage that makes you want to bust into a fit of air guitar—the unevenly metered, Sherman tank trudge that closes “Rusty Cage,” the blues-metal crunch of “Drawing Flies,” the quasi-thrash gallop of “Jesus Christ Pose,” etc.—the music is rife with ten times as many intangibles. To choose just one, then there’s the high-end ambient buzz that permeates the album from start to finish, imbuing it with a static charge not unlike the electricity one feels in the air when entire sky darkens under a massive storm cloud.
Indeed, much of Badmotorfinger’s power resides in its suggestion of a violence that rarely erupts and offers little catharsis when it does. The best example can be found on “Slaves and Bulldozers,” a seething seven-minute crawl where Thayil spends most of the time strangulating his guitar strings for spasms of noise that almost seem to emanate from an inhuman source. If you've ever been rendered speechless by the sight of the ocean, stars, volcanic activity—anything that suddenly makes you aware of your minuscule place in the order of life—Thayil’s “leads” (if they can even be called that) surge with the same coldly neutral ferocity.
Meanwhile, even when Cornell unleashes his famous throat-scraping roar on the line “now I know why you’ve been shaking,” the enormity of the music feels choked back rather than triumphant. In sharp contrast to other heavy music—which is mostly designed to take frustration out on external targets—Soundgarden's signature rumble doesn’t give you an athletic rush. All of that gnashing turmoil on “Slaves and Bulldozers” actually points inward, collecting in your muscle tissue as a kind of seismic potential energy. And when the entire band pulls back for Cornell to switch to a bluesy murmur before the song’s wailing climax, Soundgarden show a command of dynamics they simply hadn’t been capable of before.
As you listen more closely, it becomes increasingly apparent that none of the songs lend themselves to primary hues like “angry,” “sad,” or even “rocking.” In its most rousing moments, Badmotorfinger is anchored by a pensiveness that fosters daydreaming as much if not more than it gives you reason to bang your head. Fittingly, the album’s lyrics venture well beyond heavy rock’s typical purview: Where other bands would choose to emote more directly from the gut (or elsewhere), Soundgarden temper the attack of the music with painterly images Cornell delivers with Beatnik flair. On “Room a Thousand Years Wide,” Thayil’s refrain of “tomorrow begat tomorrow” extends the song’s ambiguously woebegone perspective over timeless eons. And though bassist Ben Shepherd’s “Somewhere” doesn’t quite disclose itself as a love song, the sense of romance is undeniable in lines like “From the likes of her/To the time of me/Like the moon to earth/Or the sky to sea./Only we’re no longer/Allowed to be.”
Badmotorfinger is also anchored by drummer Matt Cameron’s inimitable way of dragging the beat back while also smoothing-out Cornell and Thayil’s preference for uneven time signatures. Even on punkish uptempo bangers like “Rusty Cage” and “Face Pollution,” Soundgarden never simply barrel forward, switching gears on a dime and moving sideways with the dexterity of a prog act. (Hence Mark Arm’s Rush comparison.)
With all four members stretching more than ever before, at several points the music verges on the transportive, head-trip vibe of space rock or psychedelia. On the dreamlike “Searching with My Good Eye Closed” swirls of guitar twine around Cornell’s voice, heavily draped in reverb to give it the weight of a mystical presence speaking through clouds. When playing together in a room, the band tended to lumber through the song—evidenced painfully by the bonus concert and demo versions included in the deluxe package.
Speaking of which: The studio outtakes here may be interesting from a forensic point of view, but they’re basically glorified demos that lack the agility of the finished songs. And while the version of “Black Rain”—with lyrics that would later be refitted for the Superunknown hit “Fell on Black Days”—works as a curio, the song selection could have gone deeper to include the early version of “No Attention,” a tune the band attempted during the Badmotorfinger sessions before settling on a later version for 1996’s Down on the Upside.
In its definitive form, though, “Searching with My Good Eye Closed” is the most dramatic example of Soundgarden’s ability to touch the otherworldly. If you listen very closely to the fade out, you can hear the last wisp of Cornell’s voice trailing off: It’s barely audible and lasts for just half a second before it's smothered out of the frame by the leaden trudge of “Room a Thousand Years Wide.” The same thing essentially happened with the band’s career two years later, when Soundgarden went on to sell five million and became alterna-rock household names with their next album, 1994’s Superunknown. Much like when a director known for working in black and white switches to color, the obvious change in palette is initially what dazzles about Superunknown.
But as both albums have aged, you could make a case that Soundgarden actually accomplished more with the comparatively limited shading of Badmotorfinger. Listening back now it’s an album that would have sounded fresh and vital released at any time over the past quarter century. The band didn’t do the music any favors with that dreadfully dated “Outshined” video, but it doesn’t take long for Badmotorfinger to reveal itself as something far greater than a relic of its time.
