Badmotorfinger is the third studio album by American rock band Soundgarden, released on October 8, 1991, through A&M Records. Soundgarden began the recording sessions for the album with new bassist Ben Shepherd in early 1991. The album maintained the band's heavy metal sound, while featuring an increased focus on songwriting compared to the band's previous releases. AllMusic considered the album's music to be "surprisingly cerebral and arty"; alternative tunings and odd time signatures were present on several of the album's songs, and lyrics were intended to be ambiguous and evocative.
The focus on the Seattle grunge scene helped bring attention to Badmotorfinger, and the singles "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" found a major audience in rock radio and MTV. Badmotorfinger became the band's highest charting album at the time on the Billboard 200, where it peaked at number 39. The album received critical acclaim, citing the significant improvements over earlier releases and evolution in the band's sound. Soundgarden supported the album with tours of North America and Europe, including opening for Guns N' Roses on the Use Your Illusion Tour. In 1992, Badmotorfinger was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1996. alternative metal, heavy metal He added that the album was more representative of how the band was live. It was Soundgarden's first album with bassist Ben Shepherd, who replaced Jason Everman in April 1990, and Cornell said Shepherd brought a "fresh and creative" approach to the recording sessions, while the band as a whole said his knowledge of music and writing skills redefined the group. Before joining, Soundgarden had been Shepherd's favorite band. Shepherd contributed the song "Somewhere" and collaborated on the musical composition of several other songs on the album, as did Thayil and drummer Matt Cameron. Thayil said Shepherd's contributions helped make the album "faster" and "weirder".
Several of the album's songs utilize alternative tunings, such as "Rusty Cage", "Searching with My Good Eye Closed", and "Holy Water", on all of which the bottom E string of the guitars is tuned down to B. "Mind Riot" also uses an alternative tuning on which every string is tuned to one of several octaves of E. while "Face Pollution" is in 9/8. Thayil claimed the band did not deliberately pursue unusual meters, stating they were instead the result of a "push to get the quirkiness out of things". Thayil compared listening to the album to "reading a novel [about] man's conflict with himself and society, or the government, or his family, or the economy". Cornell noted that "Outshined" is about shifting from "periods of extreme self-confidence" to "plummeting in the opposite direction". "Jesus Christ Pose" was written about public figures who exploit the symbol of Jesus' crucifixion to suggest they are persecuted by the public. Thayil wrote the lyrics for "Room a Thousand Years Wide", stating the song is about "experience in general".
Recording
The album was recorded in early 1991 at Studio D in Sausalito, California, Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington, and A&M Studios in Los Angeles, California. Soundgarden chose to work with producer Terry Date, as it had on Louder Than Love, because, according to Cornell, the band had a good relationship with Date and did not want to go through the pressure of trying to find a new producer. One example of the innovative techniques used to record the album is that, for the opening song, "Rusty Cage", Thayil used a wah pedal as an audio filter, which resulted in an unusual guitar sound he said produced a guitar riff that "almost sounds backward".
Outtakes
"Cold Bitch", which was one of Shepherd's favorite songs the band recorded, was featured on the Australasia "Outshined" single in 1992, while "She's a Politician" first appeared on the EP Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas (or SOMMS) released June 28, 1992. The song "Birth Ritual" was worked on during the Badmotorfinger recording sessions, but was not completed. "Black Rain" was mostly recorded during the sessions, but the vocals were never completed. It was eventually finished in 2010 and released on Telephantasm and Echo of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across the Path. Three additional tracks were discarded during the mixing process, two of which were named "A Broom" and "How Should I Know?"
Although Badmotorfingers singles featured plenty of B-sides, none of these were from the recording sessions for the album. A one-day recording session with Stuart Hallerman yielded "Stray Cat Blues", "Into the Void (Sealth)", "Girl U Want", "Show Me", and "Touch Me".
Artwork and title
The Badmotorfinger logo on the cover of the album was drawn by guitarist Mark Dancey of the Sub Pop band Big Chief and consists of a jagged, cyclone-like design, in the center of which is a triangle that has the album's title along the interior perimeter and a spark plug in the middle. Thayil suggested the title Badmotorfinger as a joke on the Montrose song "Bad Motor Scooter" and said, regarding the title: "It was sort of off the top of my head. I simply like it because it was colorful. It was kinda aggressive, too ... It conjures up a lot of different kinds of images. We like the ambiguity in it, the way it sounded and the way it looked."
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Badmotorfinger was scheduled for release on September 24, 1991, but A&M Records pushed it back to October 8 due to "production problems." Coming a month and a half after Pearl Jam's Ten and just weeks after Nirvana's Nevermind and Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik (both of which were released on September 24), it has been credited with helping to break alternative rock and grunge into the mainstream. Although overshadowed at the time of its release by the sudden popularity of Nevermind, the attention that album brought to the Seattle music scene helped Soundgarden get broader exposure, and Badmotorfinger peaked at number 39 on the Billboard 200 album chart on February 29, 1992. It was among the 100 top selling albums of 1992, sold a million copies in the early 1990s, and was certified platinum by the RIAA in January 1993.
The album included the singles "Jesus Christ Pose", "Outshined", and "Rusty Cage", which gained considerable airtime on alternative rock radio stations. The music videos for "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" gained considerable airtime on MTV, but the video for "Jesus Christ Pose", the album's lead single, was removed from MTV's playlist amidst widespread controversy over the perceived anti-Christian message of the song and video.
In a contemporary review for Spin, Lauren Spencer hailed Badmotorfinger as a "garden of sound" that drew on older hard rock influences without sounding "derivative". Entertainment Weekly critic Gina Arnold commended Soundgarden for writing more engagingly than their contemporaries, "who seldom get beyond extolling booze, girls, and cars". She concluded in her review that the record was more "stylishly bombastic rather than bludgeoningly bombastic. Tuneless heavy metal is, after all, still tuneless heavy metal, and in that department, Soundgarden are as functional as they make 'em." Retrospectively, AllMusic staff-writer Steve Huey deemed Badmotorfinger "heavy, challenging hard rock full of intellectual sensibility and complex band interplay", That same year, the album won a Northwest Area Music Award for Best Metal Album.
It was ranked number 45 in the October 2006 issue of Guitar World on the magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitar albums of all time. Also, in April 2019, was ranked number 2 on Rolling Stones "50 Greatest Grunge Albums" list.
Buzz Osborne, whose band Melvins had a massive influence on grunge, called Badmotorfinger his favorite grunge album of all time, praising its sophistication and complex structures. In 2010, singer Greg Puciato named "Room a Thousand Years Wide" his favorite song.
In 2022, Pitchfork included the album on its list of "The 25 Best Grunge Albums of the '90s".
25th anniversary reissues (2016)
The 25th anniversary reissue of Badmotorfinger was released in two deluxe formats:
- The "Deluxe Edition" is a two-CD package featuring a remastered version of the album on the first disc, with studio outtakes and live tracks from a 1992 performance at Seattle's Paramount Theatre on the second.
- The "Super Deluxe Edition" is a seven-disc box set. It includes the remastered album on disc one, studio outtakes on disc two, and the Paramount Theatre live audio spread across discs three and four. Disc five is a DVD of that same concert, while disc six features Motorvision—a 1992 concert film documenting the Paramount show alongside other live tracks and the album's three promotional music videos. Disc seven contains a 5.1 surround sound mix of the album on Blu-ray Audio. The set was packaged with various collectors' items, and the first 1,000 pre-orders included an exclusive 7-inch vinyl reissue of the "Jesus Christ Pose" single.
A 2-LP gatefold of the album was also made available, with a limited edition of 1,000 produced using silver-colored vinyl.
The Badmotorfinger reissue was created using a backup digital audio tape safety copy of the album, as the original master tapes were damaged or destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire, which affected the label group's tape vault and purportedly destroyed material from hundreds of other recording artists. According to a document filed as part of a class action lawsuit Soundgarden and other artists brought against UMG as a result of the fire, the label made the band aware in May 2015 that the original half-inch master tape of Badmotorfinger had been destroyed and was unavailable for use on the remaster project. After this, Soundgarden took a slot opening for Skid Row in North America in February 1992 on their Slave to the Grind tour. Soundgarden then headed to Europe for a month-long headlining theater tour They later released Motorvision, which was filmed at the Paramount Theatre in 1992.
Track listing
Original release
Satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas EP
In anticipation of the band's appearance on the 1992 Lollapalooza tour, a limited edition of Badmotorfinger was released on June 28, 1992, with a second disc containing the EP Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas (or SOMMS). The title is a palindrome. This EP includes three covers, an unreleased original song, and a live version of "Slaves & Bulldozers". For the cover of Black Sabbath's "Into the Void", the original lyrics were replaced with words of protest by Chief Seattle (also known as Sealth), which fit the meter of the song.
Satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas was reissued on purple 12" vinyl for Record Store Day on November 25, 2016.
Personnel
Soundgarden
- Chris Cornell – vocals, rhythm guitar
- Kim Thayil – lead guitar
- Ben Shepherd – bass
- Matt Cameron – drums
Additional personnel
- Scott Granlund – saxophone on "Room a Thousand Years Wide" and "Drawing Flies"
- Ernst Long – trumpet on "Face Pollution", "Room a Thousand Years Wide", and "Drawing Flies"
- Damon Stewart – narration on "Searching with My Good Eye Closed"
Artwork
- Mark Dancey – front cover illustration
- Walberg Design – design
- Michael Lavine – photography
- Len Peltier – art direction
Production
- Terry Date – production, engineering
- Soundgarden – production
- Larry Brewer – production assistance
- Efren Herrera – assistance
- John Jackson – assistance
- Ron St. Germain – mixing
- Howie Weinberg – mastering
- Susan Silver – management
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
! Chart (1992)
! Peak<br>position
|-
! scope="row"| Australian Albums (ARIA)
| style="text-align:center"| 54
|-
|-
|-
|}
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! Chart (1994)
! Peak<br>position
|-
|}
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! Chart (2016)
! Peak<br>position
|-
!scope="row"|US Tastemaker Albums (Billboard) ||align="center"| 8
|}
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
! Chart (2017)
! Peak<br>position
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Canadian Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 72
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|US Digital Albums (Billboard) ||align="center"| 23
|-
!scope="row"|US Hard Rock Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 6
|-
!scope="row"|US Top Album Sales (Billboard)
|align="center"| 33
|-
!scope="row"|US Top Catalog Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 7
|-
!scope="row"|US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 13
|-
!scope="row"|US Vinyl Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 12
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! Chart (1992)
! Position
|-
! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| style="text-align:center"| 86
|}
Singles
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!rowspan="2"| Year
!rowspan="2"| Single
!colspan="3"| Peak<br>position
|-
!style="width:3.5em;font-size:75%"| US<br />Main.<br />Rock<br />
!style="width:3.5em;font-size:75%"| AUS<br />
!style="width:3.5em;font-size:75%"| UK<br />
|-
|rowspan="2"| 1991
|align="left"| "Jesus Christ Pose"
| style="text-align:center;"| —
| style="text-align:center;"| —
| style="text-align:center;"| 30
|-
|align="left"| "Outshined"
| style="text-align:center;"| 45
| style="text-align:center;"| 76
| style="text-align:center;"| 50
|-
|rowspan="1"| 1992
|align="left"| "Rusty Cage"
| style="text-align:center;"| —
| style="text-align:center;"| 80
| style="text-align:center;"| 41
|-
| colspan="5" style="text-align:center; font-size:8pt;"| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that country.
|}
Certifications
Accolades
{|class="wikitable" border="1"
! Publication
! Country
! Accolade
! Year
! Rank
|-
| Guitar World
| United States
| "100 Greatest Guitar Albums of All Time"
| 2002
| 26
|-
| Kerrang!
| United Kingdom
| "100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die"
| 1998
| 25
|-
| Visions
| Germany
| "The Most Important Albums of the 90s"
| 1999
| 3
|-
| Juice
| Australia
| "The 100 (+34) Greatest Albums of the 90s"
| 1999
| 48
|-
| The Movement
| New Zealand
| "The 101 Best Albums of the 90s"
| 2004
| 84
|}