Superunknown
Soundgarden
Album Description
European pressing of the 1994 album. Soundgarden's finest hour, Superunknown is a sprawling, 70-minute magnum opus that pushes beyond any previous boundaries. Soundgarden had always loved replicating Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath riffs, but Superunknown's debt is more to mid-period Zep's layered arrangements and sweeping epics. Their earlier punk influences are rarely detectable, replaced by surprisingly effective appropriations of pop and psychedelia. This pressing features the bonus track 'She Likes Surprises'. Sony. 2005.
what is grunge, anyway?
This is my review for the regular version of Superunknown, but since I was actually referring to the 16-track import, I figured I would copy it here as well...
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So I'm taking the plunge, and like around 300 other people, offering my 2 cents on this album. I guess the one difference I can offer is that I don't really care whether or not this album is 'grunge', how it compares to Pearl Jam or Nirvana, or anything like that. All I'm concerned with is whether it is a good album or not.
And it most definitely is. 15 tracks that are basically all killers (16 if you manage to get the import version with the excellent bonus track 'She Likes Surprises'). Superunknown is definitely a change of pace from Badmotorfinger and its predecessors, but it is a natural progression, and mostly for the better. The trademark heaviness is still there in songs like 'Mailman' and '4th Of July' but there's also great focus on melody, and yes occasionally something nearing "pop" in songs like 'Fell On Black Days' and 'Black Hole Sun'.
Incidentally, the latter song gets a pretty bad rap in a lot of reviews here, but I think much of this is a reaction to the insane amount of radio play that the song received. I had this album for a good stretch of time before the song stormed the radio, and from that objective point of view I think it's safe to say that it is a brilliantly written and executed song, and quite frankly I'm surprised that mainstream radio backed it so strongly, considering that it does have quite a few rather odd and non-commercial elements to it.
For what it's worth, my album highlights are 'The Day I Tried To Live', 'She Likes Surprises', '4th Of July' and 'Half' (which, judging from other reviews, is probably too weird for some). The artwork is pretty amazing too, and matches the music well. All in all, Superunknown is one of the great rock albums, with a healthy but not overpowering dose of experimentation. Whether or not it's grunge, well... what is grunge, anyway?
Superunknown is a Great Rock Album
Although they didn't achieve the success of their friends' Alice In Chains, Nirvana and Pearl Jam the music on this album is more impressive than ever. The songs display the explosive low-tuned guitar notes of Kim Thayil along with bassist Ben Shepard and Drummer Matt Cameron, proving to be one of rocks most potent rhythm sections. And of course you have the ultimate Soundgarden signature of singer Chris Cornell's wailing, powerful vocals.
The album shows it's maturity with songs like "Kickstand", "Like Suicide" and "Mailman". The best part of album are the singles "Spoonman" (which features a slight cheesy but interesting megaphone spoken word type vocals) and "Black Hole Sun" a dark psychedelic moody power ballad that broke Soundgarden into the Top 40. This is a great rock album.
Get the Bonus Track Without Spending So Much
Rather than spending a gob of money to get this import version of the CD, just to get one bonus track (the last one), you can just buy that track from Amazon's MP3 Downloads for only $.99. That's the only difference between this disc and the domestic one. To find the mp3, just search MP3 Downloads for "She-Likes-Surprises", or you can do a regular search and find it a little ways down in the results too.
