In Retrospect: "Soundgarden - Superunknown"

Superunknown is the fourth album by American grunge band Soundgarden. The album was released in 1994, through A&M Records and was recorded with the then-new producer for Soundgarden - Michael Beinhorn.  

Backstory

The work on the new record began when Soundgarden had finished touring on the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. The band members would go their own seperate ways to create new material for an album, while they would take a break from the touring. The record let all of the members contribute to the songs more, as the songs from the previous record were mostly all written by lead singer and songwritter Chris Cornell.

After the band had worked with their producer Terry Date for the last two albums, the band seeked out a new producer Michael Beinhorn. Guitarist Kim Thayil said: "We just thought we'd go for a change. Michael didn't have his own trademark sound which he was trying to tack on to Soundgarden".

Recording

Before the recording sessions the band members all listened to their own work that they had recorded on their own, and slowly started to piece the parts together into songs. After the songs were ready, the band set out to Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington in July 1993. The recording was done by the band, Beinhorn and engineer Adam Kasper, whom was the engineer that the band had used on many of the following albums.   

The bass and drum parts were recorded first for the easier guitar and vocals tracks. The band spent a lot of time in the studio experimenting with different drum and guitar sounds with layering several different tracks making the record sound more expansive. Cornell even stated: "Michael Beinhorn was so into sounds. He was so, almost, anal about it, that it took the piss out of us a lot of the time ... By the time you get the sounds that you want to record the song, you're sick and tired of playing it."   

The mixing was done after Cornell had recorded all of his parts and left to open for Neil Young, whom was on the tour in the United States. The mixing was done by Brendan O’Brien, whom was recommended to by Pearl Jam lead guitarist Stone Gossard. The mixing was the fastest and easiest part of the record according to the band. 

Composition/Lyrics

The record has shown the same style of music as the previous work from the band, only incorporating different styles of music into the sound of the band. Cornell said that the album was more challenging and more versatile than any of the albums that the band had released until this album. The songs in the album have Middle-Eastern influences as well as influences from The Beatles, pop and psychedelia. Besides the various influences, the band used alternative tunings for their guitars and different time signatures besides the usual 4/4.

The lyrics are as always with Cornell very mysterious and dark, but can be traced to dealing with issues such as depression and drug abuse as well as tackling themes such as revenge, fear, loss and death. Thayil stated: "a lot of Superunknown seems to me to be about life, not death. Maybe not affirming it, but rejoicing—like the Druids said: 'Life is good, but death's gonna be even better!" The song Let Me Drown is about “crawling back to the womb to die”, 4th Of July is about using LSD and Mailman is about coming to work early one morning to shoot your boss from work in the head.  

...In Retrospect

Soundgarden was the last of the four big grunge bands I listened to, starting with Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots and later with Pearl Jam. This was the first album I had listened to, and was instantly hooked by it. The songs 4th July, Black Hole Sun and Spoonman are still one of my favourite songs to this day. If you haven’t listened to this band or this album, and have listened to Nirvana or Pearl Jam and liked them, give this album a good listen, I guarantee you will enjoy it very much so.