Band: Soundgarden
Album: Badmotorfinger
Best song: “Jesus Christ Pose,” “Rusty Cage,” “Slaves & Bulldozers,” “Outshined” and “Room a Thousand Years Wide” are all great.
Worst song: The whole album is pretty excellent.

Though it wasn’t at the time — I was likely still listening to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice as an elementary school kid — 1991 was a huge year for music. It’s well-known as the year that grunge “broke,” shooting the transition from hair band nonsense to punk/indie nonsense as the popular rock music genre. R.E.M.’s Out of Time was released in 1991. Slint’s Spiderland — one of my favorite albums of all time, but one I did not discover until I was in late high school — was released that year. Pearl Jam’s Ten was released that fall, two weeks after Metallica’s black album was released. Even the mediocre, post-peak records were very good, as evidenced by Ozzy’s No More Tears album. Continue reading →