louder than love
(1989, a&m)
After finally giving in to the major-label advances of A&M, at a time when A&R men were crawling all over Seattle like the undead coming over the hill in a George Romero film, Soundgarden were beginning to truly broker their legend. Ultramega OK was brimming with life, but undone by its reedy production. on follow-up Louder Than Love, the dense and dry production by Terry date (who had worked with Metal Church, dream Theater and Sir-Mix-A Lot) brought Soundgarden’s gargantuan riffs and caterwauling to thrilling life.
Lazy journalism (guilty) might have labelled the band and their whole town as ‘grunge’, but as drummer Matt Cameron recalls: “We’re more of an avant-garde metal band. I think that set us apart.”
He wasn’t wrong. While many latched on to the band’s Black Sabbath guitar parts (I once asked Kim Thayil if he was going to pay Tony Iommi royalties for the riffs he’d borrowed. He gave me a look that could best be described as ‘quizzical’) and Chris Cornell’s banshee-like approach to singing that was often compared to a young Robert Plant, by now Soundgarden had a very definite sound and one that they could call their own.
on Louder Than Love, they were not above down-tuning and experimenting with time signatures – Get On The Snake sounds like Jimmy Page through a Frank Zappa prism, while I Awake tumbles, rises and falls and rises again, foggy and beautiful and dreamlike in its make up.
The pounding Hands All Over (an early single in the UK) was singled out and chastised for its ’kill your mother’ lyric, as if it were a Jim Morrison matricide steal, when in fact Soundgarden were singing about saving the planet. Gun was a much scarier lyric and proposition, crawling on its belly towards an uncertain doom.
It was the album that also inspired the short-lived Louder Than… band merchandise (Louder Than Meat was a particular fan favourite) and inspired Kirk Hammett to write Enter Sandman: “Soundgarden had just put out Louder Than Love. I was trying to capture their attitude toward big, heavy riffs,” the Metallica man said. At least he tried. PW