-- Soundgarden - A-Sides | (Audio CD) MSRP $ 13.98 Amazon Price $ 13.98 Savings $ 0.00 | |  Release Date: 04 November, 1997, A&M Records
TRACK LISTING - Nothing to Say
- Flower
- Loud Love
- Hands All Over
- Get on the Snake
- Jesus Christ Pose
- Outshined
- Rusty Cage
- Spoonman
- Day I Tried to Live
- Black Hole Sun
- Fell on Black Days
- Pretty Noose
- Burden in My Hand
- Blow up the Outside World
- Ty Cobb
- Bleed Together
Usually ships in 24 hours | | | awesome | | In 1997 one of rocks greatest bands decided to call it quits. Shortly after the breakup, Soundgarden released A-Sides, a seventeen song disc containing some of the best material from their career. Though they practically invented the "Seattle Sound", Nirvana gets all the credit. This cd shows how the band slowly evolved from a brooding heavy metal style to a creative blend of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and even Pink Floyd. This disk kicks off with their early stuff like "Hands all over" and "Flower", which display their talent for creating a powerful, yet controlled metal sound. Then are songs like "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" that let the listener know that the creativity is growing even more. After that are songs from their most successful album, "Superunknown". This is the period where the band started to break free of its dreaded "grunge` label. The album closes off with songs from their last, and best album, "Down on the upside". What a perfect way to end a CD. Songs like "Blow up the outside world" and "Pretty Noose" proved that they still had raw power in their last year of rock`n, and "Burden in my hand" is the pinnacle of their creative growth with use of mandolins and superb drumming by Matt Cameron. Chris Cornell`s vocals seem to tear up the speakers everytime you listen to this CD, along with great bass sounds from Ben Shephard (and Hiro Yamamoto), and of course the amazing swirling guitar riffs and solos from Kim Thayil. Although this CD doesn`t include "Zero Chance" and some of their other great songs, it is quite a summary of their great career. | | | | One Of Seattle`s Finest | | Soundgarden. What can you say? Their music is absolutely timeless. They`ve made some of the best rock songs ever, and "A-Sides" captures a good amount of them. From anthems like "Black Hole Sun" and "Blow Up The Outside World", to the more soft rock songs like "The Day I Tried To Live" and "Burden In My Hand", to the proto-metal of "Jesus Christ Pose" and "Rusty Cage", to some of my personal favorites "Outshined" (I love the sludge riff) and "Pretty Noose" (the bass notes in this song are amazing), Soundgarden covered it all. Of course a few songs were missing (both "My Wave" and the title track on "Superunknown" come to mind), but it was obvious that was gonna happen, Soundgarden has a very big selection of material. With that said, you also shouldn`t rob yourself by ignoring their other albums, as Soundgarden had just as many good songs that aren`t singles. But the material here is more than worth your time and investment. And the extra track "Bleed Together" is a great song with a punk edge, but still being catchy. "A-Sides" isn`t the best of the best, but some of the best from a legendary band. It`s highly recommended to rock fans who have yet to get into the band. Soundgarden didn`t just carry the grunge flag the longest, they were one of the last rock bands that actually mattered. After Soundgarden broke up, rock music just wasn`t the same. | | | | Great for anybody trying to get into Soundgarden or Grunge! | | First off, If you didn`t figure this out before, this album is essentially a compilation of the best songs from Soundgarden`s 6 album spanning career, not necesarrily a Greatest Hits compilation, as many of the songs on here are not hits, but you will find many hits. Soundgarden, along with Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, hit it big after the sucess of Nirvana with the sucess of Superunknown, which featured the massive hit "Black Hole Sun", "The Day I Tried To Live", and "Fell on Black Days". It also had the mildly popular "Spoonman", which introduced the major public to Soundgarden. Although this was Soundgarden`s commercial breakthrough, they`d had many albums before this one. Soundgarden started off with the EP "Screaming Life/Fopp" which is represented on A-Sides with the haunting song "Nothing to Say", which has a surprising amount of maturity for a song released on their first album, and is one of my personal favorites. Thier next CD turned out to be a full LP, and it was called Ultramega OK, and this album is represented by "Flower", yet again another powerful song with great lyrics from Cornell. Next up Soundgarden released another LP, Louder Than Love, which is represented on A-Sides with "Loud Love", a song with a great chorus that sounds a lot like fellow Grunge band Mother Love Bone, "Hands All Over" has great guitar work from Kim Thayil, and " Get on the Snake", a song that to me sounds like late 80`s metal with an AC/DC edge to it. Soundgarden`s next album was their first Major Label release, and it was this album, not Nevermind, that was expected to blow the Alt Rock doors open. That album, the mysteriously called Badmotorfinger, is probably Soundgarden at their grungiest and best, and still stands as thier best album in my opinion, with no bad songs on it whatsoever, and it is represented in A-Sides with the less than stellar "Jesus Christ Pose", which is a little to repetitive for me, "Outshined", my 2nd favorite Soundgarden song because of the great chorus and overall musicianship to the song, and "Rusty Cage", a song that features some great singing via Cornell and a speed that rivals Metallica in some ways. The next album, as I have said before, Superunknown, was Soundgarden`s huge commercial breakthrough, and most all of the singles off Superunknown are still radio staples on any station. Superunknown is represented on A-Sides with the catchy "Spoonman", a song that gets old after a few listens though, "The Day I Tried To Live", a dark song that builds up to Cornell`s haunting lyrics(Great Guitar work too!), "Black Hole Sun", my personal favorite song from Soundgarden, as just everything seems to fit, with Cornell`s GREAT vocals, and the end of this song really makes you want to jump up out of your seat and bang your head(Really!), and finally the last song of Superunknown is "Fell on Black Days", a song that starts slow but really picks up at the end, great musicianship all around. Soundgarden`s next album, Down on the Upside, was thought to be as big a commercial sucess as its predecessor, but upon it`s release, it flirted on the charts for a few weeks, then dropped off, and sales never really picked up after that. Down on the Upside is represented on A-Sides with the songs that follow: "Pretty Noose",a song with great vocals from Cornell and really good drumming from Cameron, "Burden In My Hand",a relatively slow song with an awesome chorus, gets faster at the end, "Blow up the Outside World", a song that starts slow with annoying vocals but quickly picks up to an awesome chorus due to some great vocals via Cornell, and the worst song on the album, "Ty Cobb", a song with a pretty good beat that is ruined by the stupid lyrics that don`t add anything to the song. There is also a previously unreleased song on here, titled "Bleed Together", and it is a great addition to A-Sides, with really good guitar and drumming work, and catchy vocals from Cornell. Unfortuneatly, after poor sales on Down on the Upside, Soundgarden decided to part ways, closing one of the best chapters in the history of Grunge, and in effect, ending the whole grunge movement, with Pearl Jam the only one to carry the load but failing to do so with their albums Yield and Binaural. Since the end of Soundgarden, Chris Cornell has gone on to do a solo project, releasing the LP "Euphoria Morning", and also teaming up with the instrumentalists of Rage Against the Machine to release the stellar self-titled LP "Audioslave", which has introduced a whole new generation to Chris Cornell and his faithful old band Soundgarden, and A-Sides is where you want to start. | | |
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