Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger is being expanded into a massive 7-disc edition.
The new version of the Soundgarden classic album release will feature 109 tracks total: 79 tracks, videos & mixes are previously unreleased. The CD audio content includes the original album newly remastered; 15 previously unreleased studio outtakes newly mixed from the original analog multi-tracks plus the track New Damage featuring Brian May from Queen; and Live at the Paramount: Soundgarden’s first-ever complete concert album newly mixed from the original analog multi-tracks and recorded at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle on March 6th,1992. The newly edited DVD is from the original camera masters and newly mixed in 5.1 surround sound and stereo from the original analog multi-tracks.
The second DVD is Motorvision + More: Soundgarden’s 1992 Motorvision home video, also released on DVD for the first time ever, showcases live selections from the two nights shot at the Paramount Theatre in March 1992 along with interviews from the band and friends.
Bonus videos include 11 unreleased archival live performances from various shows and festivals in 1992 and the three official music videos from the album.
The Blu-ray Audio disc contains the original Badmotorfinger album, three B-sides, and the three official music videos, newly mixed from original analog multi-tracks in audiophile 96kHz 24-bit 5.1 surround sound.
The original album and three B-sides feature newly designed visuals directed by Josh Graham.
Soundgarden Badmotorfinger. Already with the grunge explosion celebrated heavily in the Soundgarden-adjacent camp (box sets devoted of Mother Love Bone and Temple of the Dog are among 2016’s bigger collections)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p194MTN9JKw
The late summer and early fall of 1991 effectively witnessed the birth of grunge , within just a few weeks, of Nirvana‘s Nevermind , Pearl Jam‘s Ten and, Soundgarden‘s Badmotorfinger. Alice in Chains‘ Facelift had arrived earlier, in 1990.
All of these albums were crucial in that, together, they helped usher in a sea change across the music industry. Yet Soundgarden, who had been first to the table, forming all the way back in 1984, would be the last of these so-called “big four” to enjoy their just desserts: not enjoying truly massive hit singles at radio or multi-platinum sales until 1994’s Superunknown because they did it their own way,
Unlike Nirvana, which led the charge by breaking punk rock and college rock to the masses via “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Alice in Chains, which essentially made heavy metal palatable for the flannel-wearing hordes, and Pearl Jam, which did the same for classic rock in the eyes of born again “alternative rockers,” Soundgarden’s music on Badmotorfinger put willing listeners to the test with its sinister, oblique lyrics, drop-tuned guitars, unusual time signatures, thorny arrangements and unrepentant heaviness. Sure, the band scored decent MTV coverage for the album’s most linear, if boring, doom riff in “Outshined,” but most of the remaining cuts refused to take it easy on would-be fans and critics, many of whom weren’t quite sure what to make of the band, either.
Recalled lead guitarist Kim Thayil said ” I remember Mark [Arm] from Muhoney He said, “Hey man, I just heard Badmotorfinger.” I’m all, “What do you think?” [Laughs] And he’s like, “F—, it sounds like Rush!”
He elaborated, “At the time, if people didn’t like us, they’d say they it was because we were these scruffy, punk-rock a——s, or because we sounded too much like some kind of metal band. And if they did like us, it was the same argument [laughs], ‘Oh, it’s cool because they’re metal, or it’s cool because they come from this punk scene.’ any specific label onto Soundgarden has always been an exercise in futility.
All four musicians — Thayil, Shepard, singer Chris Cornell and drummer Matt Cameron — contributed strong songwriting efforts to the album, led by Cornell’s serpentine “Rusty Cage” , the aforementioned “Outshined,” quite surreal “Searching with My Good Eye Closed,” hypnotic “Mind Riot” and less distinctive “Holy Water.” For his part, drummer Cameron delivered the driving, sax-enhanced “Drawing Flies” and, in unison with Thayil, the monstrous doom-riffing of “Room a Thousand Years Wide” and the ominous “New Damage,” one of many songs boasting unorthodox time signatures, in this case 9/8.
Then there was newcomer Shepherd, whom Cornell said he had brought a “fresh and creative” approach to the band’s recording process, with Thayil also saying that Shepherd’s contributions helped make the album “faster” and “weirder.” By this they were referring to Ben’s two-minute punk rock hyper-blast “Face Pollution,” the more deliberate, yet surprisingly infectious “Somewhere” and, working with Cornell, the ultra-doomy “Slaves and Bulldozers .
But Badmotorfinger‘s sheer highlight was a four-way band collaboration called “Jesus Christ Pose,” which rose from Cameron’s mind-boggling percussive assault to boast dissonant six-string strangling over a relentless charging main riff, all topped by Cornell’s inimitable wails.
The Fat Angel Sings 