Album Vs Album: Badmotorfinger Vs Nevermind

For as much as grunge was about darkness and misery, at least anecdotally, few genres have burned brighter than it did for that brief period in the 90s. Grunge did not last long, but its influence continues to be felt to this very day. The mainstay grunge bands have become treasured members of the classic rock fraternity, while their progeny dominate the charts still. It's hard to turn on modern rock radio without hearing songs imbued with the sound and spirit of Seattle.

But for all that grunge is perceived to be, the actual grunge bands were not those things. Alice In Chains was a metal version of CSNY, Pearl Jam was a dirty classic rock band, Soundgarden was a group of bluesy oddballs, and Nirvana was a pop band filtered through punk angst. To find the actual 'grunge' sound, you need to look to the bands that took influence from the originators, because it's in them you will hear the sound of flannel pouring through your speakers. It would later get corrupted by bands like Nickelback and the entire 'post-grunge' wave, but given how amorphis grunge really was, the inverted course of evolution is an intriguing bit of metal biology.

Grunge had two men who could be called the voice of their generation. In the literal sense of the term, that was Chris Cornell, the superbly talented singer whose voice could shatter glass as well as break hearts. His influence is harder to hear because of the difficulty in taking up his style, but his legacy endures as one of the most talented belters of his generation. In the metaphorical sense of the term, it was Kurt Cobain, the tortured soul whose non-sensical poetry and raspy yelling was the very embodiment of disaffected youth. It didn't matter if "Smells Like Teen Spirit" said nothing, because to millions it said everything.

Badmotorfinger: Soundgarden's third album broke them into the public consciousness. Quickly going platinum, Soundgarden not only helped push the grunge movement forward, but expanded its possibilities. Playing with altered tunings, advanced chords, and unusual time signatures, Soundgarden were a band of artists always looking for a new twist on how to spread their message. Going off the beaten path did not stop the album from success, as both "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" became hits, and have been added to the rotation of classic rock radio. Soundgarden's appeal and legacy have endured, rising in esteem as both the thinking-man's grunge band, but also the most underrated of the big names at the time. History is correcting the record.

Nevermind: The album that launched grunge as a phenomenon, "Nevermind" is one of those albums that defines time itself. For rock fans, there was before "Nevermind" and after it. The album's impact was immediate, and immense. As "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Lithium", "Come As You Are", and "In Bloom" became massive hits, Nirvana's popularity swept aside an entire generation of stale and played-out 80s rock. Hair bands were suddenly gone, instead chasing the trend of flannel and grime. A new paradigm for a new age was written, and their influence has been readily apparent in a wave of singers who tried (and failed) to master the art of screaming in key. They either lacked the skill, or the genuine anguish, to do what Kurt Cobain had done. Instead, we got bands like Puddle Of Mudd, who blended all the grunge bands together, showing that a rainbow when condensed turns into soupy, brown mud.

D.M's Pick: What we've stumbled into here is one of the great musical "what ifs?" of our generation.  Originally slated to be released the same day as "Nevermind" on September 24th, 1991, "Badmotorfinger" was slid back two weeks to October 8th due to what A&M Records called 'production issues.'  In the intervening period, Nirvana conquered the world, and oh, by the way, Red Hot Chili Peppers released "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" on the 24th, mopping up anybody that Nirvana had left behind.  "Badmotorfinger" was so badly overrun in the tidal wave of Nirvana's arrival on the main stage that Soundgarden wouldn't truly become household names until they made a second definitive statement with "Superunknown."

And so one can't help but wonder what could have been - what if A&M had stuck to the original release date and "Badmotorfinger" had been given an equal shot to make its mark?  In the aftermath of both albums, musicians, both casual and professional, will generally cede that Soundgarden is the artistically superior band, and that "Badmotorfinger" is, musically, a better album.  

Therefore, I'm backing "Badmotorfinger" here.  And now I'm going to spend a paragraph where it seems like I'm making the case for Nirvana.  Bear with me.

Ultimately, the benefit of "Badmotorfinger" keeping its original release date would have allowed that album to not start with such an obvious handicap, but I don't know that the outcome would have been appreciably altered.  "Nevermind" had captured the spirit of disaffected youth that was exploding as the Cold War closed, and having contained that particular caustic lightning in a bottle, exploded into the hearts and minds of listeners everywhere in a way that Soundgarden never truly would.  Nirvana spoke in plain English, without metaphor or riddle, and that meant something to a generation that was exhausted with double talk both from immediate authority figures and from their elected (or appointed) leaders.  By contrast, the first single off of "Badmotorfinger" was "Jesus Christ Pose," a song that Soundgarden admitted was purposefully ambiguous.  Not to mention that there's a musical density to that song which defies the convention of the era.  Plus, I offer this as empirical evidence - Pearl Jam's "Ten" was released roughly a month before "Nevermind," and while no one would call "Ten" a flop, it was also buried under the avalanche of "Nevermind."  "Nevermind" became the popular epithet for grunge music as a whole.

But the question is not about which is the more popular record - for Nirvana wins that argument with ease.  After all, they dethroned Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" as the #1 album on the charts, which is unthinkable in retrospect.  We are talking about which is the best record.  And there, my friend, "Badmotorfinger" shines.  Or sludges, as the case may be.

You mentioned the voices in the interim.  Ask yourself the question - could Kurt Cobain hold a candle to Chris Cornell?  The question should always be asked thusly; could Cornell have done vocals for "Smells Like Teen Spirit?" He would have had to adjust his style, but the answer is yes.  Cornell's vocal understanding and musical knowledge would have made for a fairly easy transition (one need only listen to his cover of "Billie Jean" for a rough approximation of what it might have sounded like.)  Now, could Cobain have replicated the necessary range and pained vitriol of "Slaves & Bulldozers"?  I say no.  "Slaves & Bulldozers" can in many ways be regarded as his pinnacle performance, the most consistently powerful delivery he ever mustered.  It is, essentially, Soundgarden's "Man in the Box," a song that could not be replicated properly by any contemporary vocalist, and Cornell, unlike that seminal Alice in Chains single, performed the entire thing as one man.  No one, be it Cobain or Staley or Vedder or that too-often overlooked grunge crooner, Mark Lanegan, could have performed the song with the same aplomb.

And it's going to sound like I'm bagging Cobain here, and I don't mean to, but it must be said for the purpose of the conversation - Kim Thayil is the superior guitar player.  As a youth, I remember thinking that his guitar sounded anguished, as though it were being strangled, or run past its limits.  Which doesn't sound like a complement, but speaks to the ability of Thayil to work unorthodox sounds and styles into music that was destined to still be popular enough to certify platinum.  As a music listening public, that wouldn't really happen again until Tom Morello with Rage Against the Machine.  Thayil sets so much of the pace of "Badmotorfinger," from the opening, probing strains of "Rusty Cage," to the tortured, full-bore opening of "New Damage."  Thayil would usher us into a Drop D paradise from which whole genres would be born.

Lastly, I want to address the album's tone - as I mentioned above, Nirvana captured the spirit of a moment, and I have some inkling that you may talk about them writing catchier, more accessible, pop-bred songs.  Which is all true.  Pop music has a tendency to fade, however.  What Soundgarden created, with depth and harmony and a brooding, shambling pace, still lives at the roots of many bands active in the modern era.  Those (fresh) tendrils still grip the core of heavy music that they helped shape.  Nirvana raged brightly against ennui, and Alice in Chains took us through the hell of addiction, but Soundgarden explored the unclean corners of an unquiet mind, which would become the raison d'etre for alternative and heavy music for the next three decades.  From a mainstream standpoint, that began with "Badmotorfinger."

"Badmotorfinger" remains a staple of musicians around the globe.  Buzz Osbourne continues to cite it as one of his favorites.  While the sales numbers may not match, "Badmotorfinger" retains every bit the legacy of "Nevermind."  And there's not one bad song on it.

Chris C's Pick: I hate to be a basic kind of guy, but I have to go with "Nevermind", despite your extolling the virtues of Soundgarden to me. I will preface my comments with this; I will not contest that Soundgarden is the more influential band. Because they did something that was not just unique, but multi-faceted, they gave more opportunities for followers to pick up their mantle. Practically every rock band who isn't tracing their direct sound to the 70s or 80s is derived from Soundgarden directly. Their impact is as much about the ripples as it is the stone breaking the water's surface. Their ability to blend metallic heaviness, bluesy groove, and Cornell's wailing vocals transcends time.

Nirvana was a simpler band, and that is both why their influence doesn't reach as deep, but also why I end up siding with them in this instance. Kurt Cobain wrote pop songs that he then gussied up with ugly distortion and a self-destructive attitude. He used earworms as a vehicle to infect the listeners, to try to point them toward music he himself would have said was better than his own. Writing those kinds of irresistible songs is so hard, it's not a mystery why few bands have ever sounded like Nirvana and become big.

So what we have here is, in essence, a choice between skin and bone. Nirvana's music isn't as deep, but it spreads out further. Nirvana's music isn't as strong, but we can write our own stories upon it. I completely understand why people would prefer Soundgarden, and there's part of me that would like to go down that road as well, but at heart I am a lapsed pop fan. My entire approach to music starts with pop, and adds in rock, metal, and whatever else. That's exactly what Cobain did, dissecting pop hits to turn his songs into a formula destined to work on people like me. I was not, and still am not, cool enough to match Cornell's swagger or confidence. Cobain was a dweeb, and his songs express the reality of being a music nerd who wanted to be cooler than he really was. I admire the way he used the limitations of the band, both the three-piece nature and his own skills, to focus on making the most of every element. The riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is as simple as it gets, which is the entire point. You could feel everything he sang because there wasn't as much surrounding him to get in the way.

When I listen to music, I want to hear songs that resonate with me, of course, but whether they do or not they must hook me. Not just the singles, but also "Breed", "On A Plane", and even "Polly" do that more than any Soundgarden song does. That doesn't make them better, just easier to digest. Soundgarden is a band you need to love before you understand everything they do. Nirvana is a band you understand long before you love, if you love them. They are the entry point to a whole movement, and perhaps the entirety of this comes down to the fact I was not a disaffected youth of that kind when either of these albums came out. I was more melancholy than angry, more reflective than angsty. I did not need the power of Soundgarden to disperse the ugly energy inside me. I did, however, need the shiny overtones of Nirvana learn how to seem like everyone else.

For all of that, my pick is "Nevermind".

Verdict: Even though we are split on the decision, I feel like we're actually agreeing on the verdict. Soundgarden was by far the more accomplished band, and they are the one who falls into that discsussion we usually hear about The Velvet Underground; fewer people heard them, but all of them started bands of their own. Anyone who wants to find out what musical talent was hidden under the aesthetic of grunge would be best served to explore Soundgarden's catalog. They, of the bands, were the closest to carrying on the power of Led Zeppelin into their generation.

Nirvana's music spoke to people at a certain time, but of course as we have moved beyond our youths that music has become less relevant to our own lives. Nirvana was who we were, while Soundgarden was who we were trying to become. Perhaps the only difference here is how close we have come to making it there.