Published on Mar 17, 2006
While most everyone in my high school was counting the days to the
release of Metallica’s “black” album in 1991, I counted the weeks
until the release of Badmotorfinger. Getting exposed to
Soundgarden in 1989 after reading a rave for Louder Than
Love from Circus gave me a nasty possessive streak for
Soundgarden.
For music geeks, getting exposed to a band (by
deliberate action from friends or just blind luck) before MTV or
mainstream radio means partial ownership of a band. You were there
on the ground floor. Any fans who caught on to that band afterward
were considered bandwagon jumpers unworthy of the level of fan
dedication that you have.
That superiority streak can also affect the way these
fans judge albums that may break their favorite band into the
mainstream. After all, how many times have you heard the following
phrases uttered from record store clerks or music snobs:
— “Anything R.E.M.’s released after Document
has totally sucked.”
— “U2 started sucking after Joshua Tree.”
— “Dude, Metallica has sucked since the Black Album.”
— “Yeah, but that’s coming from fans who’ve only gotten into them
since The Soft Bulletin was released.” (OK, this one’s
pretty rare unless your life revolves around music and/or the
Flaming Lips.)
I have to admit that I held such a bias toward
Badmotorfinger. The album was part of the Seattle trifecta
in 1991, which included Nevermind and Ten. If Nirvana
raised everyone’s eyebrows and Pearl Jam made Seattle’s sound more
accessible for the masses, Soundgarden benefited from the
geographic association as well as their sound, which was a more
traditional heavy metal sound. Unfortunately, the first few listens
of Badmotorfinger had me thinking “sellout.” The fact that
MTV was putting “Outshined” in heavy rotation only justified my
belief.
It was only a few years after mainstream music
totally shunned alternative music or college rock that I warmed up
to Badmotorfinger. It also didn’t hurt that
Superunknown was waaaaay more mainstream than
Badmotorfinger was. A lesson well learned: Just because an
album is popular, doesn’t mean it sucks. “Outshined” may have been
a prototypical “grunge” song, but the rest of Badmotorfinger
was a jungle of sound that included horns, a twisted take on a
Speak and Spell toy and some impressive bass lines courtesy of Ben
Shepard.
It’s hard to classify Badmotorfinger as a
“grunge” album when its overall sound is heavy metal. Kim Thayil
creates some of the most memorable air-guitar moments in the
early-’90s with “Jesus Christ Pose,” “Face Pollution” and “Rusty
Cage.” Match that with the vocals of Chris Cornell, who had
probably the ultimate heavy metal pipes of the early 90s, and
you’ve got a heavy metal superpower. If grunge was about scaling
back, then Soundgarden hardly qualified for that label, with
ambitious tracks like “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” and Mind
Riot.”
If Soundgarden was too metal for grunge, they were
definitely too experimental for typical heavy metal. Their lyrics
were also well above spandex fray, with heady subjects like
religious manipulation (“Jesus Christ Pose,” “Holy Water”) or
… something else (“Drawing Flies”). In the end,
Badmotorfinger took years to fully digest what it was (an
ass-kicking album) as well as what it wasn’t (a grunge template).
Unlike Nevermind or, to a lesser extent, Ten,
Badmotorfinger was an album most bands wisely avoided trying
to recreate.