Badmotorfinger

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.