The seed had been sown.īuy from Rough Trade or listen on SpotifyĪccused of betraying their punk roots by signing to a major label, Soundgarden couldn’t have made their second album more of an up yours to their detractors if they’d turned Seattle’s Space Needle into a giant papier-mâché middle finger. The ideas here would be sketched out more convincingly on future recordings but Ultramega OK was a promising start. The singer’s way with the sort of twisted hook would elevate them to great success and there’s early evidence of it here, especially on the charismatic swagger of All Your Lies. It introduced a template they would hone on records to come, where chiming chords morph into monster riffs and atmospheric interludes are anchored by Cameron’s rhythmical power.Ĭornell’s vocals were mesmerising from the off, a vulnerable lost boy one minute and furious banshee the next. Aside from reservations on its sonic qualities, the tracks still stand up in 2020. The unease was lessened when Thayil and producer Jack Endino, who the band had originally tried to enlist for a salvage job only to run out of budget, remixed the album for a re-release in 2017. Cornell complained publicly about its sound in the years following Ultramega OK’s release, feeling that the set of songs the band had written deserved better than the production supplied by Drew Canulette. Soundgarden were never happy with their debut. There's no stranger rock hit than Black Hole Sun, which sort of sounds like how people on heavy drugs might hear The Beatles but, on the face of it, is also just a really catchy ballad. It was rock music alright – huge, slithery riffs, a howling vocal that could direct ships to shore and a rhythm section locked in with taut intensity – but rock music that sounded like it was being beamed in from the Twilight Zone. The bigger they got, the weirder their songs became. Instead of turning their early punk rawness into straightforward heavy rock anthems, Soundgarden used success to streamline their strangeness. But if A&M had envisaged Soundgarden as the next Guns N’ Roses, a possibility given they were sent out on the road as support to Axl Rose & co., the four-piece had other ideas. The quartet, whose classic line-up was cemented by the recruitment of drummer Matt Cameron in 1986 and bassist Ben Shepherd in 1990, were classed as sell-outs by Seattleites when they became one of the first local bands to sign a major label record deal.
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