A Screaming Life – Kim Thayil – Book Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

3rd Secret – 3rd Secret – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Soundgarden - Ultramega OK

Soundgarden released their first full length album in 1988.  It's mainly unremarkable stuff, lots of Led Zeppelin-channelling metal with the Chris Cornell seeking (and finding) his voice over the top of it.  All Your Lies isn't a million miles off the kind of grunge Green River were playing around this time.  Mood for Trouble is more complex, evoking late period Zeppelin while incessant Mace is more akin to Dazed and Confused.

There are two standouts.  Opening track Flower is built on a low, grinding riff and rocks to good effect, its clattering Zep-y rhythm plots the way towards Spoonman amongst others.  The slow trudge of Beyond the Wheel gives Cornell the opportunity to show his range, from the opening foreboding growl to full-on, head-back roar over more grinding riffs.  They would get better than this but interesting to see where they started. 

Soundgarden - Screaming Life

Soundgarden released their debut EP in late 1987, Screaming Life.  It's noteworthy for having two strong heavy rockers on it.  Opening track Hunted Down, has a low slung, menacing riff through it.  Chris Cornell hadn't quite found his voice at this point, he sings this one in a more generic late 80s metal voice.  It's not a particularly Soundgarden-y track, you could imagine it being performed by Alice In Chains.  A lot of the rest of the EP is, while not terrible, not particularly noteworthy.  Songs like Entering and Tears To Forget are kind of scream-y metal, while Little Joe tries to mix that metal with funk with predictably tedious results.  The other real keeper here is Nothing To Say.  Much slower than anything else here, it has a dead-slow-yet-heavy-as-fuck riff that powers through the song.  Here Cornell pushes his singing register to its upper limit and the track is pretty effective.

Soundgarden - Down On The Upside

Soundgarden released Down On The Upside in 1996, just before the band went on hiatus for a number of years.  This album doesn't get the credit that Badmotorfinger and Superunknown get, possibly because there are 16 songs on it, a lot for anyone to digest. 

Opening with the driving rock one-two of Pretty Noose and Rhinosaur, Chris Cornell is on fine voice, backed up by Kim Thayil's bruising riffs.  And it's not just bluster here: Cornell exhibits his fine lower register croon on Zero Chance.  The nihilistic Blow Up the Outside World isn't a million miles away from Black Hole Sun, while Burden In My Hand is arguably the strongest track here.  Aided by a driving set of guitar riffs, it's a gloriously downbeat anthem to failure. 

The band embrace many different styles here.  The punk-as-fuck Ty Cobb barrels along at speed with a chorus of "hard headed fuck you all".  On the other hand, Applebite has some almost post-rock, bleak guitar licks, with Cornell's vocal heavily distorted.  

There is a lot of material here to digest, and towards the end of the album there are fewer standouts.  Overfloater has a real late-period Led Zeppelin vibe to it, reminiscent of No Quarter.  Final track Boot Camp is almost like an elegy for the band, with slow, heavy, mournful riffs and Cornell singing lyrics ripe for analysis: "must obey the rules... no staring at the clouds... I must contain my views... there must be something good far away from here".  It's a stark ending to an essential Soundgarden release. 

Chris Cornell – A Perspective

Article for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/05/18/chris-cornell-a-perspective/

Album Review: HBS - In Deep Owl

Review for www.spillmagazine.com

http://spillmagazine.com/album_reviews.html#HBS

Album Review: Soundgarden – Superunknown

Forget the joke figure that Chris Cornell turned himself into. Back in 1994, Soundgarden with Cornell on lead vocals released their masterpiece. He was one of the great grunge voices of the era. His voice soared over the bludgeoning, guttural riffs of Kim Thayil, especially on this album.

Previous albums had impressed, but Superunknown was a bold statement. 70 minutes and 15 diverse tracks was quite a lot to take in. Were they aiming for a White Album of grunge, maybe? The bottom line with this album is it is full of great, heavy songs, many of which were quite anthemic, and a lot of it is more metal than grunge.

Fell On Black Days, starts with a great, driving low riff and a superb vocal from Cornell. Mailman, is heavier, almost draggier (in a good way), as Cornell sings about “heading for the bottom”. The title track follows which races along at breakneck speed, sounding enormous. Thayil plays not one but 2 guitar riffs and Cornell belts out the lyrics as if his life depended on it.

There is room for moodier introspection (with a degree of heaviness) on tracks like Head Down, The Day I Tried To Live, both of which feature unusual, exciting chord progressions. Along similar lines Black Hole Sun made a huge impression on MTV, being both a moody anthem, and being radio-friendly.

At the opposite end of the spectrum Spoonman is a heavy anthem featuring jackhammer drums, rampaging riffs and a spoon solo (!) in the middle (failed to start a musical trend), while Kickstand is a short, sharp, punky shock to the system.

On Half they try their hand at Eastern stylings while 4th of July drags a little on sludgier than sludgy riffs, but in the main the ten tonne, 20 metres below sea-level guitar riffs and vocal pyrotechnics win the day here. It’s one of the essential albums of the grunge era.

The grunge/Seattle revival

It may have escaped some of you, but around about 17-18 years ago music was in the grip of (for want of a better word) grunge. Led by Nirvana, from around 1991 to 1994 there was a lot of great music, largely inspired by a mixture of Black Sabbath, punk and classic rock.

Of late, many of these bands are returning. The sole survivor, Pearl Jam were one band who never went away. Much derided as corporate rockers at the time, the band ploughed their own furrow. They drew far more on classic rock style bands than Nirvana did, and released a consistent string of albums (most recently last year’s Backspacer) while shunning the spotlight for the most part.

Alice in Chains split in the late 90s due to singer Layne Staley’s inability to record an tour. Unfortunately he passed away in 2002 but the band reformed in 2009 with a new singer William DuVall and released a fairly decent album, Black Gives Way to Blue, which compares reasonably well with their previous studio albums.

Soundgarden split in the late 90s, and Chris Cornell joined the band Audioslave, while also embarking on a solo career with decidedly mixed results. His solo career culminated in last year’s god-awful Scream, produced by Timbaland of all people. Having shredded his credibility, it seems like the only thing to do is to reform his old band. Cynical?

Courtney Love has also put Hole back together, without any of the original members. It’s hard to imagine them improving on 1994’s Live Through This, which was without doubt their finest hour.

Even the Stone Temple Pilots have got in on the act. Unfairly criticised as bandwagon jumpers (mainly due to them not being from Seattle), they produced a poppy variant of grunge, which I have a real soft spot for. They continued till 2003 when singer Scott Weiland jumped ship to rockers Velvet Revolver. Having reformed mainly to tour, the band found the chemistry was still there and have a self-titled new album due out in May. Though the fact that Weiland recorded separately from the rest of the band doesn’t augur well.

Mark Lanegan trudged through the late 80s and 90s in superb classic rock band Screaming Trees, who were lumped into the grunge category due to the fact that they were from the northwest of America. Yet their music was not particularly grungey. However by the time the band fell apart, Lanegan had substance abuse issues, and had proved wholly unreliable. It is remarkable that, having cleaned up, he has turned his undoubted talent away from drugs to focus entirely on making music with whoever he chooses, and has become one of the hardest working men in rock.

Smashing Pumpkins split in 2000. Billy Corgan then formed Zwan with Pumpkins’ drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, and subsequently released a solo album before reforming Smashing Pumpkins in 2005, again with Chamberlin. After releasing one album, Chamberlin has now left, leaving the band as pretty much just Billy Corgan.

As for Nirvana, former member Dave Grohl has been plodding along for years in the Foo Fighters, though has made some fantastic drumming appearances on Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf and also last years’ Them Crooked Vultures album. Krist Novoselic has dabbled some musical projects (Eyes Adrift, Sweet 75, Flipper) while also turning to journalism, writing a column for the Seattle Weekly. Although according to his blog he is reforming Nirvana, though he will be the only original member (!).*

Is it a case that, having exhausted the 80s revival, that it’s 90s revival time? And do we really want this?

* Obviously he was taking the p*ss.