About
Soundgarden debuted as a swaggering, leaden Hard Rock outfit, all flailing hair and meaty Metal riffs -- this was the Soundgarden of "Big Dumb Sex" and "Full On Kevin's Mom." By the time grunge reached its heyday on MTV, the pages of Rolling Stone, and the radio, the Seattle band had reined in its lunk-headed tendencies and focused on crafting excellent songs such as "Burden In My Hand," "Like Suicide" (the elegiac swansong for grunge's commercial invincibility), and "Overfloater." They never completely captured the imagination of a generation the way their friends and contemporaries did -- Nirvana were more mercurial, Pearl Jam more anthemic. But more than any other grunge outfit, Soundgarden demonstrated the influence of '70s Hard Rock on grunge. Longtime fans claim that Soundgarden softened up over the years, citing the insane crossover success of "Black Hole Sun" (1994) as Exhibit A in the band's paving of their previously potholed Grunge/Metal hybrid. But given a closer listen, some of the band's later material -- "Pretty Noose" and "Let Me Drown," for example -- thuds just as emphatically as their late '80s releases on Sub Pop and SST.
- Charles Hodgkins
