Soundgarden was one of the heaviest bands coming out of the whole Seattle grunge movement of the early nineties. After I got tired of Pearl Jam and lost interest in Nirvana’s lackluster followups and B-side crap, I still came back to Soundgarden. In fact, I still listen to Badmotorfinger from 1991 and Superunknown from 1994.
Badmotorfinger is my favorite, though. The tracks on this album have that raw energy that attracted me to their music in the first place. They combined heavy metal with a kind of bluesy psychedelic sound that just blew me away. Below is an early nineties video of Slaves and Bulldozers, one of my favorite songs from Badmotorfinger. It’s a great representation of their early sound in general and just an awesome track.
There’s another version of this somewhere that I really liked, but I haven’t been able to find it again yet. It was a really long, psychedelic version where they slowed it down and made it even heavier and tripped out. I’ll try to find it and post it here sometime. For now, enjoy this video.
Soundgarden has reunited as of January 2010 and is working on a new album and a reunion tour during the summer of 2011. Frontman Chris Cornell is following that up with a solo tour of Australia and New Zealand. Keep an eye on these guys as they’re still announcing more shows in the future.