Review Summary: Humble Beginnings for the Seattle band.
Soundgarden is one of the bands in the Big Five Of Grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots). Now despite that, there really weren’t that many grunge albums made by these five bands. One of the only grunge albums from the Big Five is Soundgarden’s debut album, Ultramega Ok. Of course, not all grunge albums have aged well (most haven’t) so, how does Soundgarden’s debut stack up now❓
The sound of Ultramega Ok is borderline heavy metal at times, but is still in that late-eighties grunge sound akin to bands like Mudhoney. Now, the album jumps around a lot with songs that are slow and doomy (“Beyond The Wheel”), fast and punk-like (“Circle Of Power”), to straight up grunge songs (“All Your Lies”). Most of these songs work really well within their given style, however this constant jumping around can cause some really bad results such as the sloppy bridge in “He Didn’t”. Outside of those instances of sloppy instrumentation, the band sound fantastic. Chris Cornell didn’t quite have the phenomenal vocals that he had in the nineties, but he still has some truly incredible performances on songs like “Beyond The Wheel” and “Flower”. Kim Thayil already had great guitar riffs and tends to be the highlight of most (if not all) of the songs. Matt Cameron thunderous drumming can create some addicting drum rolls like on “Flower” and “Nazi Driver”. Hiro Yamamoto is probably the weakest link although, he is still doing really good on this album. Some of these basslines are just awesome like in “All Your Lies” and “Incessant Mace”. The band sound really strong here, but still have those sloppy moments that are to be expected of an album like this.
Ultramega Ok’s production is pretty much what you would expect from an indie release in the eighties. The upside to this style of production is that the guitar and drums sound really punchy. The downside is that the bass ends up drowned in the mix compared to everything else. Still, the guitar riffs sound mammoth in some of these songs creating a really impressive atmosphere. The drumming sounds powerful and Chris Cornell is never drowned out by the rest of the band. There are a couple of songs that benefit from this type of production (“665”, “Beyond The Wheel”, and “667”), but two of those songs brings us to the biggest problem with this album. The flow of this album is really bad and it’s really bad for one reason.
This album has a serious filler issue. The album starts off strong with “Flower” and “All Your Lies”, but is quickly interrupted with the first piece of fluff called “665”. A joke on the whole backmasking controversy that’s kind of funny the first time and really annoying on all repeat listens. After that, there’s another great song in “Beyond The Wheel” then, “667” which is the second part to “665” and even less interesting than its predecessor. “Mood For Trouble” ends up being pretty enjoyable, but feels really repetitive and “Circle Of Power” has some decent instrumentation with some truly horrible vocals from Yamamoto. The album has some smooth sailing until the closer “One Minute Of Silence” which is another gag song that’s just not that funny and ends the album on an underwhelming note. Even worse, is the fact that “Incessant Mace” could have been an excellent closer to the album with it’s thunderous riffs and amazing wailing from Cornell. It just doesn’t flow that effectively and ends up making the album a chore to listen to.
Based off of the amount of filler, you would imagine that the songwriting would be pretty sloppy. That’s surprisingly not the case. None of the songs have lyrics that top anything the band made in the future, but there’s some good lyrics that contribute more to an atmosphere then really saying anything. The delivery that Cornell uses for these lyrics almost always makes the song better like the threatening tones of “Beyond The Wheel” or, the aggression on “Nazi Driver”. The real glory of the songwriting is in the instrumentation has every song has something memorable about them from a musical sense. Whether it be the intensity of “He Didn’t” or the soul in their cover of “Smokestack Lightning” there’s always something great going on in the instrumentation. There is so much energy in the instrumentation that would later tone down with professionalism in their nineties work. That energy, in turn, is infectious and makes the whole album that much better.
In conclusion, this album hasn’t aged that well. Not because of the production, but more because of the way the album is constructed. It’s full of issues from a flow standpoint and the album’s pacing is all over the place. There are amazing songs in here that stand with some of the band’s strongest work, however it’s not enough for this album to get a higher rating. Ultramega Ok is a good album from a band who would go on to do much better work over their career. The good stuff on here would’ve made for one amazing EP, but as an album it’s simply their weakest work by a long shot.
Highlights:
“Flower”
“Beyond The Wheel” (Best Song)
“Nazi Driver”
“Incessant Mace”
