title/desc src: now, invisibly - wellwater conspiracy / scumbag blues - them crooked vultures
imagery src: various wwc releases
greetings! call me hunter (he/him). adult, but not old. several different flavours of queer and neurointeresting.
i play bass (alone) and ride bikes, and i'm a cat person. i live rurally in a crumbling union.
i'm an outdoorsy kinda guy too depressed to leave the house. i love to sea fish, but video games are the perfect dose of instant mental stimulation. my current pipedream is to tour & fish the pacific northwest on a bike.
i mostly aim to blog here about soundgarden and related side projects (chiefly hater, HBS and the wellwater conspiracy), but other bands may sneak in from time to time to fill space.
rhythm section fanboy always on the lookout for ben shepherd content
i've basically all but abandoned this blog since getting back into ryu ga gotoku, but someone mentioned to me earlier today that they were getting into soundgarden and that's like a sleeper agent activation for me.
i wrote out a pretty long (by discord message standards; i strayed fairly deep into nitro character length territory) "review" of my top three songs from each album, plus three of my favourites from b-side collections etc., aimed mostly at someone who isn't as ill about soundgarden as i am.
not included in this post are the wellwater conspiracy and HBS songs i linked to them prior, because i will never not take an excuse to shill WWC to anyone who'll listen.
in any case, it's a fair amount of scrolling, so i'll throw the rest under a cut:
king animal (2012)
eyelid's mouth
taree
by crooked steps
i think my spotify wrapped had all of these, but not necessarily in this order. honourable mention @ blood on the valley floor for sounding like it came right off superunknown despite being composed 20 years later
eyelid's mouth has a delicious psychedelic tone & aforementioned feature. taree is a very stripped back, nostalgic love song to the pacific northwest with cute guitar licks during the bridge and outro that fill me with a sense of childlike whimsy. crooked steps GOES HARD and counting it is fairly difficult. it's just so much fun to listen to
down on the upside (1996)
tighter & tighter
applebite
zero chance
DOTU in general marked a distinct slowing down from previous albums; i don't hate the heavier songs on this album (I LOVE no attention) but the lower-key entries stand out and feel much more thoughtful to me in how they're put together.
tighter & tighter conveys a really strong emotion to me through the distorted open C chord during the refrain. applebite is mostly there as a sort of "break" in the middle of the album but i really enjoy it in its own right, as unintelligible as the lyrics are. zero chance is weird for me because i'm not usually a fan of heavily acoustic songs, but there's something about the way soundgarden present the acoustic guitar alongside everything else that sits really nicely in my brain. it's probably the bass tbh. ben shepherd is grossly underrated as a bassist
superunknown (1994)
limo wreck
4th of july
mailman
physically painful to leave limo wreck out of the linked recs but it's absolutely up there as one of my faves - the build-up and the vocal performance are almost unparalleled (beyond the wheel comes close, but feels a lot more static in comparison). 4th of july lays the dissonance on very thick - it's a song about a bad acid trip, and it feels legitimately apocalyptic. mailman keeps the sinister tone going (which i adore especially on this album) (not all of it is like this [try half]) but is a bit more toned down compared to the former two
badmotorfinger (1991)
holy water
room a thousand years wide
somewhere
solid album front to back, but these ones take the cake for me, very closely followed by mind riot (the song they wrote with all the guitars in oops-all-E ostrich tuning). holy water is fairly slow, almost brooding? with a strong beat that doesn't really feel like 4/4 but actually is. room 1000yrs wide and somewhere both employ 6/4; room keeps everyone mostly on the beat, while somewhere considers the beat a challenge
louder than love (1989)
ugly truth
no wrong no right
gun
ugly truth to me is one of their strongest album openers to date - rusty cage is good too, but this isn't about her. no wrong no right is another one of those spooky sounding ones that i really like, but it's different in its tonality because this is from when they still had their original bassist, hiro yamamoto. gun slaps and i dropped a line from it in the body of my dead souls majiwagi art post on tumblr
ultramega OK (1988)
flower
beyond the wheel
mood for trouble
UMOK is like pretty hate machine to me, in that i do like it and think it has some standout tracks on it, but it's not really my first choice to listen to. that said, not mentioning beyond the wheel when talking about chris cornell's vocal talent is a fucking disservice
extras
birth ritual (singles soundtrack) - i cannot understate how much i love this song and how mad i am that i can't technically include it on the BAMF lineup
into the void (sealth) (satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas)
Which of the grunge albums in this tournament is the best?
Dirt - Alice In Chains
Nevermind - Nirvana
Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
Badmotorfinger - Soundgarden
Stoner Witch - Melvins
Temple of the Dog - Temple of the Dog
Ten - Pearl Jam
Superunknown - Soundgarden
In Utero - Nirvana
Live Through This - Hole
Houdini - Melvins
Boggy Depot - Jerry Cantrell
Voting ended onAug 13, 2023
Week 3's mini game is here!!!
Two options I chose not to include are Mellon Collie and Foo Fighters' self titled, as these two are more often regarded as alt-rock and post-grunge, respectively.
I know that "grunge" is really more of a generalization made of music from Seattle in the 90s, and less a concrete definition of a genre like metal or Britpop, but for many people it's a important piece of music history in its own right, and deserves a poll of its own! So here you go, vote on this (and argue about it) while we wait for the main tournament to go on.
Edit: should be mentioned that this poll only contains albums that were submitted to this tournament! I get complaints about these mini games not including so-and-so sometimes so I thought I'd let y'all know. There were a lot of snubs in this tournament unfortunately, so many amazing albums failed to make it onto the list.
Badmotorfinger - Soundgarden vs Check Your Head - Beastie Boys
Badmotorfinger
Check Your Head
Voting ended onJul 8, 2023
Fresh out of a fierce battle with Blur, Beastie Boys are about to square up to an album that almost devastatingly swept through the poll in its previous round.
does anyone either have or know where i could get my hands on a scan of the back insert to declaration of conformity by the wellwater conspiracy? i obtained the CD secondhand a number of years ago and it came with the front insert intact, but the back missing.
not super bothered about quality as it's unlikely i'll ever feel a need to sell it on, but i would like something there for completeness' sake, you know? like, just to print off and stick in there sort of thing.
does anyone either have or know where i could get my hands on a scan of the back insert to declaration of conformity by the wellwater conspiracy? i obtained the CD secondhand a number of years ago and it came with the front insert intact, but the back missing.
not super bothered about quality as it's unlikely i'll ever feel a need to sell it on, but i would like something there for completeness' sake, you know? like, just to print off and stick in there sort of thing.
DO YOU SEE THIS? DO YOU? IāM FLYING!! This is my favorite spin of the week. Gonna do one a week because why not? I wanna see if I can stick to that.
This is Ultramega Ok by Soundgarden / Nude Dragons! I think this might have been the first album of theirs I remember hearing all the way through. Probably the first one I fell for. Itās big and full and as for this physical copy (of which Iām told thereās 750 copies out there), itās beautiful. The photo I took of the vinyl doesnāt do it justice.
PS: someday Iām gonna figure out how to edit my selfies so theyāre consistent. Whereād my scruff go in the first pic, man?
