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Review Summary: All these years cannot be mine I moved away from grunge after I left high school, plunging headfirst into the kind of ascetic and giddy unrest that good punk music offered. Some part of me likes to think I grew out of grunge, but truth is, I never did. Punk may make you artfully cynical, but there was always a central camaraderie tying the two genres. They were the music of the working class. And what grunge did, what punk scarcely could, is make you feel bug-eyed and euphoric. It was big music made by small people. Unlike punk music, it didn't hesitate to toss aside puritanism, and be as vast and bright as sound can be.
After Soundgarden reunited seven years ago, I shook off the dust, got onto YouTube and watched one of their first shows back together, at the Showbox in their hometown Seattle. They looked tired, more creased, undoubtedly changed in priorities and wants. What didn’t seem changed however is how well their best material had aged. Or how they still seemed like stoic sonic monoliths in that dark room. Or how after pulling through an hour-long set with his time-ravaged voice, Chris Cornell suddenly came alive, screaming his ass off as the band launched into Beyond the Wheel, all at once that plutonium-lung, nineteen-year old kid again. Watching that snapshot made my chest seize and blow open. I can only imagine what the people in the club felt.
Cornell, better than any of grunge’s dignitaries, walked the line of what made that time seem so boundless. Not as self-destructively introverted as Cobain or Staley, or as fierily righteous as Vedder; he seemed to truly bask and flourish in that gilded era. And the music Soundgarden forged at their peak was similarly colossal. It made the everyman seem a champion.
Much can and has been said about the blowback grunge has had on radio rock in the ensuing decade, with hundreds of inferior bands cropping up to play along. But I can understand why everyone wanted in. Because when these scrawny, long-haired Northwestern kids strapped on guitars and opened their mouths, they were as big as mountains.
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Album Rating: 4.5
I'm sorry for posting again so soon, but this hit harder than I thought it would.. Felt like saying something..
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a fitting tribute, love your stuff butcher < 3
I was never a massive fan of Soundgarden but I saw them at Soundwave a couple of years ago and Cornell's voice blew my fucking mind
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Rip hard.
So, can someone explain what "grunge" is?
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
Best Soundgarden album by far. Excellent review butcherboy !
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undertakerpt, grunge is 70's hard rock repackaged for the 90's audience, with subtle changes in delivery, and lyrical content
Butcher, well put, I was never a true grunge fanboy, I was more into other things at the time, but being in high school during the height, it was all around, and I liked the soundgarden sound above most others, they seemed to be more tied in the roots of grunge, and did not seem so fake or orchestrated.
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Great review. Pos'd.
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@wham, ah good defination, i can agree with that deffo
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well said butcher.
"What didn’t seem changed however is how well their best material had aged". Are the tenses muddled up here given the preceding few sentences? May just be me, but it doesn't read right to my eyes.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Love ya man for this review
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
thanks everyone.. unexpected loss..
AsleepInTheBack - do you think that 'had' is unnecessary?. Because i changed it from the first go around..
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was more thinking "What didn’t seem [to have] changed [, however, was] how well their best material had aged", or something along those lines, seeing as you are talking about a previous experience. Idk, I could have read it wrong man, see what you think
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Excellent write-up
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Excellent review man. Agreed hard, jamming this and other S/G albums all day, probably gonna bump this
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
nice write up dude.
I'm truly crushed by today's news
It's raining outside today. Appropriate I think.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
this is the performance of Beyond the Wheel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSdWkN6bW5k
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Nicely done Butch, same here. Had this knot on my stomach since yesterday.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
thought about writing a review after hearing about cornell, decided not to though
glad someone did
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"Punk may make you artfully cynical" way too true. just saw this write up, nice work man, definitely a great tribute to Cornell
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Man this album does so many things right. Even when its not balls-out captivating it just works
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good
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