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Soundgarden: Louder than love

14/01/10 || Daemonomania

You’ve heard of Soundgarden, right? The second-best band to bear the grunge label. Wearers of flannel. Named after the famed roadside sculpture. Decimators of 90’s ass until their so-so last release “Down on the upside” and Chris Cornell’s subsequent complete fucking sellout behavior. Most would say they hit their peak with “Superunknown” and most would be right. Prior to that ze Gardeners had a healthy few releases under their belt, and “Louder than love” was one of ‘em. History lesson over.

Despite being a pretty damn successful album commercially I find that most Soundgarden fans don’t have “LTL” in their collections. Don’t be a bunch of fucks, folks. The album is a nice midpoint between the band’s psychedelic/Zeppelin phase combined with the more refined and traditional approach of “Badmotorfinger”. Lotta hits. Lotta big riffs. Lotta Cornell at his throatbusting best. Whole lotta (whole lotta) love.

Let’s deal with the negative quickly. Drumming is nothing to write home about which is not a big surprise from Matt “Kirk” Cameron. Everyone once in a while he busts out a fill or two that gets your attention, like in “Gun”, but the long-lost brother of Vitek he is not. Bass makes guest appearances but rarely takes a starring role. A few tunes tend to wander off to starve or die of consumption prior to the wandering. Then there’s that irritating 90’s tendency to repeat the same phrase over and over at the end of a song. Rage Against the Machine style. No wonder he ended up in Soundmachine or Ragegarden or whatever the hell that corporate rock band was/is called.

Onward to the good and Golgotha’s on the way there. When the rock gets rolling it does not stop. “LTL” displays a young and hungry band with good taste in the classics and a serious appreciation for teh heavy Sabbathian school of riffery. Soundgarden takes experimentation and makes it work within the construct of actual SONGS, dammit, and manage to kick more balls than Pelé while they’re at it.

Real champs on here are Kim Thayil and Cornell. ‘Tis hard to decide if Thayil is one of the coolest guitarists out there or if he was terrible and managed to have the good luck to stumble upon a great lick now and again. Somewhere in between is likely. Then there’s Chrissy and his signature vox. Completely untrained and pure. While the lyrics may be trite or purposefully vague (to hide their dumbness) the way in which Cornell delivers them would suggest each word means more than the ring on your finger, the roof over your head, or the hair on your back. For all of those who require Soundgarden songs about snakes, have no fear, Ice Cube’s least favorite reptilians are mentioned at least twice in the lyric sheet.

Is this metal? I’d say yes. Grunge was just a convenient marketing term to lump together a bunch of heavy bands from a specific time period/area. Not to mention they toured for this album with Voivod and Faith No More. Critics said the band had lost their underground audience by being too “artsy” and commercial on “LTL”, and while I wasn’t following Soundgarden at the time it might’ve been true. Still all you non-jaded fuckfolks should give it a whirl – who knows, you might just find some of band’s best material.

Information
Released: 1989
Label: A&M
Website: Unofficial Soundgarden page
Band
Chris Cornell : vocals, guitars
Kim Thayil: guitars
Matt Cameron: drums
Hiro Yamamoto: bass

Tracklist
01. Ugly Truth
02. Hands all Over
03. Gun
04. Power Trip
05. Get on the Snake
06. Full on Kevin’s Mom
07. Loud Love
08. I Awake
09. No Wrong No Right
10. Uncovered
11. Big Dumb Sex
12. Full on (reprise)

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