Soundgarden

Soundgarden is another famous Seattle-based rock band during the popularity of the grunge rock genre early 1990’s. The group got its name from the name of an installation of outdoor phonic art at Magnuson Park in Seattle, (“The Sound Garden”.)

Soundgarden’s first members were Chris Cornell as drummer and vocalist, Kim Thayill as guitarist and Hiro Yamamoto as bass guitarist. Eventually, the band got Scott Sundquist so that Cornell would be able to focus on vocals. In 1986 however, Matt Cameron replaced Sundquist as the group’s drummer.

The first recording company to sign the group was Sub Pop. Under the said recording company, Soundgarden released two EP’s, “Screaming Life” in 1987 and “Fopp” in 1988. The two were combined under the label, “Screaming Life/Fopp” which was released in 1990.

Soundgarden released its debut album, “Ultramega OK” when the band was signed by SST Records in 1988. It was the said album which had Soundgarden win a Grammy nomination in 1990 for the category, “Best Metal Performance.” Back in 1989, the band released their first album for a known label, (A&M Records.) It was during this time when Yamamoto left the band to enroll in college so the band replaced him with Jason Everly for a while before settling with Ben Shepherd.

During the release of “Badmotorfinger” in 1991, Soundgarden had some limited success owing to the phenomenal success of Nirvana’s album, “Nevermind.” It was because of the latter though that Soundgarden got some attention that was given to Seattle. The band got to perform with other rock groups in tours as a result of a growing fan base.

March of 1994 would see Soundgarden release its breakout album, “Superunknown.” The record bannered the singles, “Black Hole Sun,” “Spoonman,” “The Day I Tried to Live,” “Fell on Black Days,” “My Wave” and “Superunknown.” The said songs ranked significantly in Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks, Modern Rock Tracks and Top 40 Rock Tracks in 1994 and 1995. The album itself is currently 6x Platinum and has topped the Billboard Top 200 chart in 1994.

Soundgarden’s following self-produced album, “Down on the Upside” would eventually be their last. The record carried the popular singles “Pretty Noose”, “Blow Up the Outside World” and “Burden in My Hand.” Following the release of the said album, the group disbanded because of internal disagreements regarding the group’s creative path. Soundgarden’s breakup was officially announced on April 9, 1997.