10 Soundgarden Songs to Hear Before You Die

L to R: the singer, the guitarist, the bassist, the backbone

Soundgarden, simply put, was one of the very best bands of the 80′s and ’90s, grunge or otherwise. A potent distillation of Zeppelin, Sabbath and post-Ramones American underground, Seattle’s favorite purveyors of hard-edged metal were dark, apocalyptic, and above all, heavy as all Hell. I’ve been waiting for a cold snap and bad moon to hammer this one out. Today will do just fine.

Let’s do this.
__________

Hands All Over: A song to play at max volume when you feel like headbanging, running through a wall or just breaking sh*t. The riff sounds a bit like the one from Nirvana’s “School,” which is none too surprising given a lot of the late ’80s grunge cuts riffed on the same lurching guitar lines. Not a lot of bands would make a push for the metal mainstream – as “Louder Than Love” clearly is – with a song claiming “Gonna KILL your mother” as its lead refrain, but that’s the kind of sinister animal SG was. And yes, Chris Cornell owns this cut (as he does almost every in the band’s catalogue), but it’s lead guitarist Kim Thayil’s rumbling composition that sets “Hands” apart from Cornell’s other vox-shredding workouts. Axl probably shat himself the first time he heard this.

Searching With My Good Eye Closed: Lunges forward with a fluid groove recalling mid-’70s Sabbath, but with an aural crush and offhanded virtuosity that musically limited, subtlety-bereft outfit couldn’t possibly pull off. Ben Shepherd detunes the hell out of his heaving basslines, but the heavy swell of low end owes to Thayil’s Gibson with bottom E ratcheted down to a throbbing B. This perhaps goes without saying, but Cornell’s “TO THE SKY” banshee wails in the final turbulent fadeout taps into some primal animal call only the great Robert Plant has past replicated.

Big Dumb Sex: A cheeky, distastefully done parody song ridiculing the excessive, highly stylized hair band culture of the late ’80s. Almost startlingly vulgar and definitely takes on more than hint of irony given Cornell’s millennial turn as a high fashion model for John Varvatos. But damn, I just don’t have the balls (no pun intended) to leave a riff THIS crushingly awesome off a list heavy on metal. Play loud if your roommates have a sense of humor, and raise a toast to Beavis and Butt-Head while your at it.

Pretty Noose: A cocksure, swaggering monster. By the mid-90s, Cornell could spit out these radio-ready psych-metal anthems on a whim, and in fact had refined and streamlined his songcraft to the point that onetime-wingman Thayil struggled to get a single song on the band’s final (66-minute) disc. Of course, that Shepherd’s “Down On The Upside” compositions outnumbered Thayil’s 6-to-1 (deservingly, I’d say – see the immaculate Eastern-tinged power ballad “Zero Chance“) couldn’t have sat well with a man whose acid-fried guitar leads were just an album ago a focal point of the band’s presentation. Tensions reached a head and the group disbanded in early ’97, but not before dropping this dimepiece of a single. To attribute the chorus – “And I don’t like what you got me hanging from” – to the pressures of superstardom and major record labels would be cliched, cynical… and probably spot on.

Mind Riot: Penning a requiem for a fallen friend is a daunting task to begin, so that “Mind Riot” succeeds on that front and as an exorcism of personal demons speaks to both Cornell’s emotional fortitude and the enormous depths of his songwriting talents. The meditative Eastern overtones portend the next album’s “Head Down,” the vaguely optimistic chorus riff perfects a dark-light motif introduced earlier in “Outshined.” That Thayil and Cornell, on top of everything else, tune each string to a variation of E just seems like showing off. If I was limited to a word… catharsis.

Burden In My Hand: It’s a testament to both the band and A&M Records that “Down On The Upside’s” two lead singles were also its hands-down best songs. I’d give “Burden” the slight edge over “Pretty Noose,” if only because the effortless melody is one of Cornell’s best and most memorable. Played back-to-back with a metal dirge like “Ugly Truth” or “Slaves And Bulldozers,” “Burden” captures Soundgarden’s jarring stylistic evolution from post-Sabbath sludge rockers to world-beating alternative radio godheads. The track’s also notable in that its steadily building wave of guitar-heavy jangle-pop crests not with Cornell’s trademark wails, but drummer Matt Cameron’s machine-gun fill at 4:24. Do not pass up the iconic video, as it is, per usual with this band, a visual spectacle of the highest order.

Slaves And Bulldozers: A shrapnel-laced corrosion that keeps coming and coming until Thayil’s puncturing guitar fits are chewing out your earhole. Cornell’s hellion bark once again fronts the aural pummeling, but “Slaves” exists a collaborative achievement of four on-point musicians who’s collective desire it is to tear you a new one. The riffs are massive, the bass crawls are menacing, the drum work is as forceful as ever, and the staggering vocal track – arguably Cornell’s most register-alteringly furious – is nothing short of mystifying. In short, this is a f*cking limo wreck set to music.

The Day I Tried To Live: The product of an unstoppable heavy metal juggernaut at the very peak of its considerable powers. I’d be willing to concede that the band never before or after approached the soaring doomsaying highs on display here, and I make such a statement with Cornell’s unhinged squall at 3:39 in mind. He’s able to make “Should’ve stayed in bed” sound less like a detached lament than the unholy meridian of all things fear and loathing. Add to his performance the strutting downbeats of the Cameron/Shepherd battery, the spine-chilling intro (“I woke the same as any other day… except a voice was in my head”), the Billboard-assaulting melody, and the wildly inventive video and you’d be hard pressed to find another track that musters a fraction of “TDITTL’s” sheer alt-rock appeal. I hope my neighbors like this song.

Beyond The Wheel: From the band’s unimpeachable debut long-player “Ultramega OK,” “Beyond The Wheel” serves a vehicle by which Soundgarden takes all their heaviest tendencies – Thayil’s sludge riffing, Cameron’s crashing hands of god, Cornell’s otherworldly holler – flush them through a demonic siphon and emerge with a piece of deliberately-paced heavy metal so pure in sound and spirit that it’s shame the rest of the genre didn’t just die on the spot. Seattle had an axiom to describe moments as this: total f*cking godhead.

Jesus Christ Pose: Heavier than Pearl Jam, darker than Alice In Chains, crammed with more thoughtful intricacies than the entire Nirvana canon, “JCP” represents the towering apex of Soundgarden’s collective powers, both in instrumental prowess (the spectacular polyrhythmic thrust is Cameron’s crowning achievement) and pointed lyrical acumen – of all the castigating reproaches of holier-than-thou hypocrisy, this is the most acerbically piercing. Avoid listening to the part beginning 4:49 if you’re alone or scared of the dark. There’s not a doubt in my mind it’s the siren song of the apocalypse.

- Robbie