Soundgarden's magnum opus "Badmotorfinger" has been with us for 30 years now and in that time it has remained pretty much uncelebrated and remembered only as the precursor to the phenomenal (but not flawless) "Superunkown". It is easy to forget that this record was around at the same time as the seminal albums of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and that Soundgarden perhaps laid down the aesthetics for "grunge" that later bands and the media later capitalized and expounded upon. The album sounds very broad and eclectic and the tasty moments it is entirely riddled with have done a lot to ensure it doesn't quite age. Soundgarden, while never being genre-specific in sound, were an all round heavy rock band at this point. "Badmotorfinger" saw them push the sonic boundaries they'd refined and while they would polish their quirks (while still keeping them) on the album that followed, here the essence of all that they were is raw and skillfully communicated all the way through.
The music mostly hangs out at the border of metal and punk. Riffs are prominent but not the standard tropes of the hard rock gods, there's a dirty undercurrent here that is like the primordial traces of sludge. The alternative rock/metal of "Superunkown" is whittled down to mere snatches in tracks like "Searching With My Good Eye Closed" while the rest trots on in frenetic punky abandon or mellow psychedelic situations. Still, you have the very memorable and radio-ready songs like "Outshined" whose riff power is undersold by a brazen chorus and stable structure. Soundgarden at this point were very effectual with employing the unconventional (odd signatures and even odder tunings) to make pretty catchy tunes. Each of the twelve songs here is worthwhile and offers varying shades of interest.
The late Chris Cornell is at the helm together with the underrated Kim Thayil. Their guitar playing is always ebullient and Kim's riffs in particular make this one of the greatest metal albums you will never worship. Cornell's vocals are a thing of absolute wonder. He has a stunning range that he dashes through with what sounds like ease and discomfort crossed together frantically. He gets in a classic rock tonality even, on tracks like the upbeat "Somewhere" or the complexly despondent "Mind Riot" and then departs to a vault of punk-isms in "Drawing Flies". The lumbering doom of "Room A Thousand Years Wide" and the eternal classic "Slaves & Bulldozers" is where he shines the most with his screeches and shrieks hitting something primal within and his conversational tone taking on profound stances.
"Jesus Christ Pose" shuffles its grunge through a more artistic sieve and continues to stand out to this day for the way its dense and blurry haze is developed into a song. The process is very involved and sounds like it is unfolding before your very ears. Matt Cameron's busy drumming locks into a groove with Ben Shepherd's bass and then all manner of guitar theatrics break loose with definitive lyrics addressing our irritation with symbolic indulgence squealing through. "Searching With My Good Eye Closed" offers more cutting but contemplative lines such as "It's been my death since I was born/I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost/But I'm on my way". It seems to have informed Alice In Chains' "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" title track. In spirit, anyway. These more quirky and artsy musical detours are what make these songs thoroughly engaging. Especially with how the band maintains a live sensibility when delivering them.
Terry Date whose producer credits include Pantera's most lauded albums, Dream Theater's debut, Slayer's last and Metal Church's "Blessing In Disguise" had his hands on this as well and it is one of his more memorable jobs. The guitar is somehow the most upfront instrument here whilst still holding down the background fort to give an airy presence whose heaviness is not sacrificed. The riffs are sharp even at their swampiest. Thayil's nifty effects and phrasing sculpt the potentially muddy moments into smoldering greatness - like just listen to "Rusty Cage" over and over and weep at the impact. The Black Sabbath-ness of it all transfers so well and peeps out again on "Holy Water" and magnetic closer "New Damage".
This is a classic album and my personal favorite out of the Soundgarden cannon. It is the Seattle sound and style at its most kinetic, its most dangerous. Together with "Louder Than Love", "Badmotorfinger" took the abrasive worlds of metal and punk and infused them with a dark soulfulness that was absolutely show-stopping because of how serenely primal it was. It was the right music at the right time (the '90's were abysmal for most creatives in the heavy fields) and the experimental flair at play made the more accessible bits credible. Kudos to the guys and rest in power Chris Cornell.
If ever there was an overlooked classic, this is it. When Badmotorfinger is actually remembered it's largely known for being one of the lesser grunge albums released in 1991 (commercially being overshadowed by Ten and Nevermind), and the album that preceded the smash hit Superunknown - and even then the songs that stick in the minds of most are the three singles: 'Rusty Cage', 'Outshined' and 'Jesus Christ Pose'. I'd say there's a lot more to this album that meets the eye; to my mind it's an excellent metal album and one of the greatest albums of the era, and it remains the band's best album, in my eyes. I also feel that there are some musical characteristics to this album that often missed, perhaps a side effect of only 3 of its tracks remaining in the memories of most.
In general this album is rather dense, varied and inaccessible take on heavy metal, with it exploring multiple strains of the genre as it filters in different influences and songwriting styles. For example, in the first 3 songs the tracklist goes from 'Rusty Cage', a speed metal song with a crushing doomy ending, to the catchy mid-tempo heavy metal/hard rock influenced 'Outshined', to a foreboding and torturously slow doom/sludge metal dirge loaded with shrieking in 'Slaves and Bulldozers'. This is a trend that continues throughout the album; it's comprised almost entirely of curve-balls with no real pattern to anything and it makes for a very interesting and satisfying listen. Through the various twists and turns the album takes by featuring these very different songs one after the other, as well as the odd nature of the music itself, Badmotorfinger quickly reveals itself to be one strange album.
Of course, the band members themselves need the musical chops to pull off the various musical ideas, and indeed they do. The album is filled to the brim with excellent guitarwork, with riffs that draw from heavy, doom, stoner and sludge metal, with some nods to hard, psychedelic and alternative rock in the simpler, groovier and noisier style the guitar riffs sometimes take. They even play with unconventional time signatures and alternative tunings throughout the album in a way that feels natural - it feels as if they're doing so to give the music a strange and off-kilter feel as opposed to showing off. The drumming is always appropriate and engaging, ranging from the steamrolling aural assault witnessed on 'Jesus Christ Pose' to a timekeeper that drives the band forward on the rocking 'Drawing Flies'. The leads are tasteful, emotive and technical, and highlight the classic rock influence that occasionally rears its head on the album. And of course there's Chris Cornell's singing - the man really is one of the greatest rock singers of all time, because he has it all: an astonishing four octave vocal range, superb emotive and expressive capability, attitude, personality, and sheer sonic power. He also shows incredible versatility, ranging from a foreboding, booming mid-range to fiery and passionate wailing and on several songs ('New Damage', 'Room A Thousand Years Wide', 'Slaves and Bulldozers') throwing in some truly unhinged shrieking to go with the equally unhinged music.
Obviously having a lot of ideas and being able to pull them off is one thing, but they also need to be backed up with varied and interesting songwriting: this is the real strength of the album. The culmination of this is 'Jesus Christ Pose', with its controlled and effortless progression in structure and riffing and its extremely dense atmosphere. Across the rest of the album, whether it's a short, fast song ('Face Pollution'), a more psychedelic song ('Searching With My Good Eye Closed' or 'Somewhere'), or an absolute crusher ('New Damage'), the band always manage to keep it fresh with change-ups in the riffs and the basic verse-chorus structure (sometimes dispensing with it entirely) and never following a formula from song to song. In the process the band show themselves to be versatile musicians who can expand upon a basic template of Sabbath-inspired metal in multiple ways. Another thing to commend is its consistency; every song, even the less popular and well received songs towards the album's end, are excellent examples of the band's unorthodox approach to their style. Pretty much the only bad idea across the entire tracklist is the ridiculous and pointless intro to 'Searching With My Good Eye Closed', which serves only to draw out the song longer than it needed to be while being stupid at the same time; fortunately, it doesn't really drag the song down in spite of that.
One of the best examples of what this album is about is the aforementioned 'Jesus Christ Pose'. In its 6 minutes it wastes no time in establishing itself as a seriously frenetic number with thrash-like, rolling riffs over a similarly rolling and pummelling drum beat and yet another stellar wailing/shrieking performance from Chris. It never lets up in its momentum or establishes a hook for the listener's mind to return to, flowing effortlessly from one riff to the next with no let up. Then of course there's 'Room a Thousand Years Wide', which may be an even better example of how odd this album is: it is 4 minutes of one chugging doom metal riff with its final minute being consumed by a blaring saxophone solo and more of Chris' shrieking; it really is as absurd and wonderful as it sounds. I think these two tracks kind of sum up the album as a whole; it's weird, wonderful, seriously creative and just a little left of field. Don't let its quirks put you off, give it some listens and over time its wonders will be revealed to you. This is one of the greatest metal albums of all time; essential for any metal fan.
R.I.P. Chris Cornell (20th July 1964 - 18th May 2017)
Badmotorfinger has always been, well, outshined (yes, that is a song from the album). During grunge’s breakthrough into the mainstream in 1991, it was overshadowed by the more popular grunge releases, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and Pearl Jam’s Ten. Even in Soundgarden’s own discography, it is eclipsed by their following album (ironically titled Superunknown, since it is considered the band’s most popular and best release).
My problem with Superunknown is that some of the songs drag on for too long and there’s a bit too much filler. Badmotorfinger suffers from the issue of songs going longer than necessary, but not to the same extent. However, there are issues with filler even more than on Superunknown, and they decided on a pretty typical practice of putting all their strongest songs at the beginning.
So the first four songs are excellent. Outshined starts off violently with some metallic riffing in 7/4 and it’s a really catchy tune, also famous for its line “looking California, feeling Minnesota.” Jesus Christ Pose is also notable, a definite highlight. Beginning with explosive, fast drumming from Matt Cameron, it moves into a simple, repetitive riff, and then into a slightly evil sounding section. Chris Cornell really shows off his driving vocal style here. Probably the most metal thing Soundgarden has done alongside Gun and Black Rain; I want to headbang just thinking about it.
After this, however, the album starts to slip downhill though even the filler is mostly solid. A standout from the second portion is Searching With My Good Eye Closed, with its quirky spoken intro and spacey riff and vocals. It is a good example of Soundgarden’s building technique, in which the end of the song is a collection of shrieks from Cornell, random cymbal hits and fills, and sometimes purposeless distortion when the song goes overboard. Like I said earlier, this is a phenomenon observed more often on Superunknown, but it still occurs here. They do a better job of figuring out when to stop on this album.
Some of the other later songs are worth mentioning for good or bad reasons. Mind Riot is a nice slower piece, but the closing track, New Damage, just drags on for too long when it would have been mediocre even if it had been cut short. Soundgarden include a horn section for some of these efforts (Drawing Flies, Face Pollution), which is interesting, but it doesn’t really do much except add a bit of extra texture.
Badmotorfinger is worth checking out just for Jesus Christ Pose alone. And the rest of isn’t exactly bad either. It’s a great album, and even the filler is good. One other complaint: the cover is a real pain to draw.
Lately I've been revisiting seminal metal albums from my adolescence in order to see how they hold up to the weight of an almost twenty-year lapse in my dedicated listening. This is more than a mere exercise in nostalgia since I am actually interested in dissecting these records from a more objective standpoint. There have been many twists and turns along the way. Some albums have held weight while others have crashed and burned. But if there's one record that I've been skirting, Badmotorfinger is it. This record was super-important to me back when it was released and I fell deeply in-and-out of love with it as the 90's progressed. But here we are almost twenty-one years later, which means I was 13 when this came out -- a total newbie whose heavy metal cassette collection totaled a mere seven albums, all of which had been released in the 70's & 80's and directed to me through my cousin. But I didn't buy this one on cassette. And it wasn't my cousin's recommendation either. Badmotorfinger was to be my first-ever, self-selected CD purchase and an album that opened the door to contemporary heavy music for me. Once I stepped through it, I never looked back. Badmotorfinger acted as a gatekeeper, an agent of intense personal change. Yet it didn't remain in an exalted place for long as other heavier and more interesting bands arranged themselves for my listening attention.
As a rural, upstate New York adolescent in 1991, access to interesting and diverse music was a difficult proposition. That was why my early tape collection was so heavily influenced by my Chicago cousin. I had only MTV to go by. The classic rock radio station didn't go past 1980 and I could only get issues of Metal Maniacs on rare trips into the city. So there was a poverty of access. That would change in '92 when grunge blew up and the prelude to that was Badmotorfinger prominently displayed on the new releases shelf of my local strip mall music store. Something about the band's name, album title, and logo struck me and I picked it up sight-unseen. I was greeted with an album full of heavy blues-based riffage and shrill melodic vocals with catchy hooks and choruses. At the time, it was revelatory. Not too heavy. Not even heavier than the Sabbath albums I owned (and those were over twenty years old at that point). And more importantly, it was accessible. Songs like "Slaves & Bulldozers," with its creepy atmospherics and wailing choruses, and "Outshined" with its deep Sabbath blues riffs, really stuck with me. I loved the crunching bite of the second-chorus riff to "Jesus Christ Pose" and the swirling psychedelia of "Somewhere." But what I loved about these songs, I soon found elsewhere -- other bands who gave me a stronger, heavier shot of what Soundgarden made me realize I was looking for.
In retrospect, this is a very strong hard rock/heavy metal record. I'm not sure what it really had to do with grunge or alternative besides being a coincidence of location, which made for a convenient marketing package. Badmotorfinger instead is so steeply rooted in a mid-70's psychedelic rock and proto-doom template that if anything it should be condemned for aping Sabbath & Zeppelin too heavily rather than for being so routinely associated with non-metal acts like Nirvana and Mudhoney. Consequently, I find there is much to enjoy here while acknowledging that I was too young and naive at 13 to recognize how derivative this record really is. The songwriting is generally strong. The riffs are tight, crunchy, and memorable. I cannot altogether consider them truly heavy anymore but they do deliver a crisp memorable punch. The rhythm section hits the right levels of bombast and swing but there is nothing too spectacular about them. My ears can no longer handle Chris Cornell's shrill high-end hysterics but his overall vocal performance is solid. The album just doesn't excite me like it used to. It's solid, dependable, well-crafted but ultimately pale in the light.
When this album was first released in October 1991, I was not old enough to really understand heavy metal. It would be awhile before I inherited a number of cassettes from Overkill, Megadeth, Metal Church, and Dark Angel from my dad before I began to really grasp the concept of it all. Fast forward to my middle school years, when I got a summer job, got some dough and sought out my first musical purchases.
The two albums I picked out were Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger" and Alice In Chains' "Dirt." I knew little of these bands, but had heard "Outshined" and "Them Bones" on the radio, so I went for it. The musical significance of the latter album often causes this one to be overlooked. It also stands as the lesser of the triumvirate of "grunge" releases in 1991, or so popular opinion in retrospect would have you believe. Considering the rivals to this album for late 1991 were "Nevermind" and "Ten," the musicality of this album trumps both in terms of performance, effort, and all around quality.
Instead of focusing on Nirvana's nihilist dim-wit drivel or Pearl Jam's musically challenged anti-rockstar concepts, Soundgarden instead filtered in a heavier dose of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple into this album. These influences had always been there, even during the somewhat amateur "Screaming Life" EP four years earlier. Yet "Badmotorfinger" watches the evolution of this Seattle band go from a little known and rather immature outfit and grow up into something of a symbol of defiance to popular trends in grunge and early 90's music. This can easily be seen in songs like "Jesus Christ Pose" or even "Rusty Cage," as they both overpower anything the grunge movement could offer in 1991, falling just short of topping Alice In Chains' debut effort a year earlier. Neither band fits the "grunge" label musically, which is why both of them are respected by metal fans and included on this site.
The consistency and maturity of this album comes from the addition of Ben Shepherd into the band. In my opinion, he's a far better musician and songwriter than Hiro Yamamoto was, even though his compositions in "Half" and "Head Down" were two of the lesser songs off "Superunknown." His compisitional writings here, in the song "Somewhere" isn't as far out there and maintains a fairly decent trace of heavy metal that oozes out of the pores of this album.
Though the Sabbath worship is obvious here, particularly in the riffs and song construction, we do get a few other influences. Speed metal pops up in songs like "Face Pollution" and "Drawing Flies," and while the lyrics of the former are rather ridiculous these are both solid speedsters that break up the slow to mid-paced doom 'n gloom going on here. "Jesus Christ Pose" also throws a few faster sections in there, not to mention being one of the greatest, if not the greatest song Soundgarden ever recorded ("4th of July" off "Superunknown" takes a close second.) Chris Cornell, who is in fine form on this album, gives one of his best performances on this track as in those banshee wails that can scare all mallcore and grunge fans the world over and force them into a frightened whimper. You would never heard kind of stuff out of Nirvana, considering those guys usually frowned on anything resembling talent and musicality.
"Outshined" always struck me as one of the better songs here, as it possesses some good ideas and a catchy chorus and melody. Considering its release as a single, its a wonder how "Smells Like Teen Spirit" caught on so fast given these two songs were out there at the same time. "Holy Water" plays around with some more Sabbath ideas, especially in the riffs and slow, inevitable doom atmosphere it gives. The only thing that keeps this from becoming a full blown gloom 'n doom workshop that "Facelift" often tended to be is Chris Cornell. His vocals are more uplifting than Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell's harmonizations were. He also possesses one of the greatest vocal talents to debut in the 1990's.
For all the good things going on here, we do have a few duds. "Searching with my Good Eye Closed" comes to mind as its too damn long not to mention boring. It sticks out like a sore thumb here. "Mind Riot" does as well, as it leans a little heavily in the grunge direction particularly taking on a little Temple of the Dog influence, one of Cornell's bands that I'm not a fan of. Grunge also raises its diseased head on "New Damage," which foreshadows some of the moments that would appear on "Superunknown." If you loved that album, you might like this song. Otherwise, its a bit of a downer to close out an album that gets some good things going but just can't keep it going for its entire duration.
"Badmotorfinger"'s legacy as a grunge album will always follow it in the eyes of many thanks to the media's incessant branding of it as such. Make no mistake, this album possesses enough talent and skills, not to mention the always welcome Sabbath tribute, to smash anything the musically backward grunge scene could offer. This band's only rival came in Alice In Chains, whose "Facelift" is superior to this one in terms of excellence in songwriting though "Dirt" actually takes a backseat compared to this. Its definitely one of the best albums the early 90's here in America had to offer. Anyone who can see past the "grunge" moniker as a blatant lie and see this album for what it is, can surely enjoy the doom atmosphere with Chris Cornell's incredible performance. Now if Cornell could just drop his inferior alt-rock/pop musical nonsense and get back with this old band, the world just might be a better place.
A few years after becoming a metal fan, it’s always interesting to take a look at the stuff you used to listen to before discovering the wonders of the superior musical genre that is metal (and becoming a lazy-minded elitist, if you aren’t careful enough). There are artists I’m now ashamed of proclaiming high and low I was a fan of (The Offspring, Nirvana and other abject, untalented garbage). There are also others that simply fell from grace for whatever reason (Oasis, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam). However, there are those bands I’ll always have a soft spot for, and Soundgarden are one of them. From time to time I still put one of their albums to evoke that comforting, nostalgic feel associated with the good times I had listening to them. It happens with other bands (Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Verve, Jane’s Addiction) but my tie with Soungdarden seems to be stronger, so I decided to take a look at my favorite albums by them, “Badmotorfinger”.
There’s a good reason I haven’t grown tired of them. SG were indeed something else at what they did, although they aren’t extremely consistent. All of their albums have moments of true brilliance, mixed with subpar material. Badmotorfinger suffers from the same problem, but some of the songs are incredible, oozing talent and great ideas (Kim Thayil is a great underrated guitarist, capable of writing some intriguing riffs and Chris Cornell laughs at most mainstream AND a lot of heavy metal vocalists even after all of these years). So, let’s get rid of the swill before anything else. “Somewhere” and “Drawing Flies” are SG at their most typical and harmless, embracing hard rock mannerisms we all know by heart. “Room a Thousand Years Wide” is just tedious, as are “Holy Water” and “New Damage”. All of these songs could be scrapped out of the album and I’m sure no one would miss them. However, the first half is where brilliance lives.
Soundgarden, as everyone knows, flirted a lot with heavy metal, drawing many influences from Black Sabbath. The first two songs are where their blend of alternative rock and metal is at their most prolific in this album. “Rusty Cage” is a very vibrant, compelling song, carried by fast drumming and a pretty cool riff, played with a strangely “thin” guitar tone that still has power to take you for a tense ride to that swamp of a section (the famous “Black Sabbath breakdown”), sludgy, heavy and with an incongruous, delightful riff. “Outshined” is another songwriting highlight. More midpaced, this song puts Chris Cornell’s feelings to music with competence. If “Rusty Cage” is anxious, “Outshined” is sadly serene. The song rumbles along plaintively, with Chris’ lyrics narrating his everyday pains until a very simple and beautiful lead soars. This very lead sounds like resignation itself, just like when a friend of yours pats you in the back in solidarity as you take a deep breath and mumble “it’s ok”, knowing that nothing will change for the better too soon. This piece has great vocals and a powerful climax. I really like to sing this song. Hell, I wish I could sing like Chris Cornell.
“Slaves and Bulldozers” is completely different from the previous tracks. The concept here is anger. With its lyrics dealing with some kind of uneven relationship, this song conveys pure oppression. Centered on sheer heaviness, crushing slow tempo, and dissonance, this song has also a legendary performance by Chris Cornell, with some of the most implacable, ear-piercing screams I’ve ever heard. The vocal lines are also awesome. You just can’t help but screaming along to:
“Virgin eyes and dirty looks
On what I have and why I took.
Counting all the hands I shook
Now I know why you've been shaking
NOW I KNOW WHY YOU'VE BEEN SHAKING!”
This song borders on physical aggression. No melody here. One of the fiercest songs I’ve ever heard. But probably, the most relentless motherfucker in this album is the classic “Jesus Christ Pose”, even if it doesn’t start like that. Here, Soundgarden shows their extensive mastery on how to create powerful build-ups and climaxes. The initial riffs are bassy, percussive… and menacingly timid. The preparation for the chorus is meticulous (has also some insane screams), and when it kicks in for the second and the third time, the song just explodes. You also got to love Chris’ captivatingly malevolent lyrics: “it wouldn’t pain me more to bury you rich… than to bury you POOR!” “Jesus Christ Pose” is the epitome of evilness. It injects you with fear and then finishes you off. In true heavy metal fashion.
The other tracks, albeit not legendary, are very good in their own right. “Face Pollution” is a brief, angular heavy metal assault that is extremely catchy, fast (*drum roll* FACE PO–LU–TION!! *drum roll* FACE PO–LU–TION!!), and has a lot energy. “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” is generally shat on because of the silly intro, but I like that song a lot. Its 4:30am, dawn-like atmosphere reminds me of “The Day I Tried to Live”, off of Superunknown and probably their best song, IMO. “Mind Riot” is completely different. It relies on cleaner guitars, beautiful melodies and appropriate production to convey an organic, almost pastoral mood. It’s good to see this less-conventional facet getting more developed, and with great results. It’s pretty nice song, almost a hidden gem.
Badmotorfinger has some disposable tracks but when it’s good, it borders on legendary. In fact, “Jesus Christ Pose” truly is. If this album had “The Day I Tried to Live” instead of “Somewhere” or “Room a Thousand Years Wide”, it would’ve been even more awesome. However, this album is purpose and feeling put to music, and this is what artists should aspire to make.
Soundgarden was one of those bands in the early 90s who, like Alice in Chains, rose out of the final wave of heavy metal in the early 90s. At times it is hard to distinguish the two from each other musically, as there are many similarities between the riffs, the muddy tone, and the lead sections. The influences taken from Black Sabbath are obvious; though in the case of Chris Cornell’s vocals and the lyrics, we get a bit of contrast from the overtly morose alone approach that defined Alice in Chains’ post-Facelift material.
We’ve got some pretty solid speed metal in the case of “Face Pollution” and “Drawing Flies”. The former is a fun speed fest with a driving main riff that sounds quite reminiscent of the minimalist approach Tony Iommi would take, though with fewer changes. The latter has a nice swing beat to it, in addition to some rather odd sounding vocal track work. Both of these songs contain extremely raw vocal performances and some unusual sounding lead guitar effects. “Rusty Cage” is also a speed oriented metal track, although only for the first half of the song, which is followed by something that sounds a lot like slower Sabbath. It also has an interesting asymmetrical riff during the fast section, although it does get a tiny bit repetitive.
Much of the rest of the better music on here is pretty much vintage Sabbath worship. “Outshined” and “Slaves and Bulldozers” sound like they could have been on Master of Reality or Vol. 4. “Somewhere” is more oriented towards the slightly meandering style of Sabbath’s debut work, although Cornell’s vocals are a lot higher and extremely raw. “Room a Thousand Years Wide” has some great heavy guitar work on here, although the rising and falling guitar bend drone in the background gets a tiny bit annoying at times. “Mind Riot” is also a bit reminiscent of Sabbath’s debut album, and particularly reminds me of “Wicked World” in terms of guitar sound. “Holy Water” sounds a good bit like “Into the Void”, although the lead work sounds a bit more like the stuff on Sabotage.
The highlight of this album and probably the most original sounding track on here is clearly “Jesus Christ Pose”. It has an extremely dense atmosphere considering it’s only a four piece band, and contains the most insane vocal performance I’ve ever heard out of Chris Cornell. Love him or hate him, this guy can wail with the best of them, and actually reminds me a tiny bit of Jeff Scott Soto (Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force/Axel Rudi Pell) when he is in the upper fringes of his singing range.
Unfortunately we do have 2 tracks that don’t work well at all. Much as was the case with tracks on various Alice in Chains songs such as “Love Song” and “Iron Gland”, it’s a case of comedy gone completely ridiculous. “Searching with my Good Eye Closed” has an extremely stupid spoken intro. I know that the overt Satan worship of the 80s was getting old, but if you are going to satirize or parody it, this is not the way to go about it. The rest of this song sounds too much like half-assed grunge outfits such as Mudhoney and Nirvana, who made their name by grooving rather than rocking. “New Damage” is pretty much the same story, nothing exciting or remotely metal, just goofy grunge grooves. I can forgive them for these two songs though, as the other 10 are quite good.
In conclusion, this would be a worthwhile purchase for fans of Alice in Chains and to Sabbath fans who wonder what it would sound like if Ozzy had been able to do all those banshee wails back in the 70s that Ian Gillian and Tony Martin were able to pull off. The production is a bit raw when compared to “Facelift”, and we don’t get the more fun sounding late 80s rock that was on there either, but there are good things happening here.
When I bought BadMotorFinger I was expecting an average album, I was shocked by how completely stunning it was. I had heard a few songs from it (Outshined and Rusty Cage, mainly) and decided that I wanted get it. After listening through once i wasn't very moved. It took me 2 or 3 listens to grasp the heaviness, an greatness, of this album.
On BadMotorFinger, Soundgarden finally blends all their influences and styles into one fully envisioned effort. Soundgarden has always maintained influences from rock mainstays like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin while drawing influences from punk too. Unlike previous releases, were there were punk songs and metal songs, BadMotorFinger has honest-to-god metal/punk hybrid songs that are awesome rockers, such as "Drawing Flies" and "Face Pollution". And more than ever pyschedelia is present, with such songs as "Slaves and Bulldozers" and "Searching With My Good Eye Closed" . Also they have such uncatagoriazable music like "Room a Thousand Years Wide" is it metal? is it punk? why the hell is there saxophone? who cares?
Of all their releases, Soundgarden sounds the best on this one, simply because; they tightened up their rhythm section by adding Ben Shepherd on bass, Chris's vocals on this album are, more than likely, his best singing effort put to record. Kims (distinctive) guitar style is most evident on BadMotorFinger, mostly due to the heavy riffing throughout BadMotorFinger.Also, Matt Cameron shows his talents with mindbending tempo changes scattered throughout this album.
Soundgarden has only one "fault" is, unlike Superunknown, it doesnt have a feeling of completeness once your done listening to it, as Superunknown does. That could be from the mild tension between new bassist Ben Shepherd, or that Chris just was so spent while making this (and Temple of The Dog, at nearly the same time).
BadMotorFinger is great album for those who would like to hear "metal" Soundgarden, and is on par with Superunknown in its songwriting.
Okay, they are a metal band, there is no questioning that... seriously, go listen to that speed metal riffage in Rusty Cage, giving way to a Sabbath-like face-fuck-with-a-splatter-of-brains. That said, it's not particularly good. It's just not all that memorable, because the grunge tendencies do kinda come on strong at times, and grunge was, unfortunately, sometimes about being anti-musical. Yes, so was punk, but at least punk was somewhat catchy. Don't ask me how or why, but the Sex Pistols were a fun band. Nirvana was not. They died too fucking hard in their angst and their desire to be taken seriously.
And Soundgarden borrowed from that ideal sometimes - songs like Searching With my Good Eye Shut and New Damage for example... just boring, plodding, bad rock and roll without the rock and/or the roll. Motorhead this isn't. Again, the early 90s were a reversion against the excesses of the 80s - the anti-rock-and-roll movement, and it still goes on with the anti-musical "I suck, therefore I deserve respect" bullshit of mallcore, which is of course taken DIRECTLY from Kurt Cobain's fucking "oh well, whatever nevermind", which is sentence of death for society, I am completely sure of it.
That said... Jesus Christ Pose is a GREAT fucking song. I mean fucking legendary. It's hypnotic, it's evil, it's heavy fucking metal. Also, the aforementioned Rusty Cage. But that's really about it. The "backwash" of this album... the stuff that they don't play on the radio, there isn't much to it. There isn't any hidden gem here like on Superunknown (4th of July, which the radio wouldn't dare touch). I suppose Outshined is pretty good, and Drawing Flies has its moments (okay, this one ALMOST is Motorhead... almost... sort of), but ...
It's not a HORRIBLE album, and I'd rather listen to it than to In Flames, but that ain't saying much I'm afraid. But if you're looking for an early 90s popular rock band, try The Offspring instead. At least they were fun.