The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Soundgarden · produced by Terry Date with the band · A&M · twelve tracks, about fifty-eight minutes
Mode
Heavy rock carried inside the alternative album: metal’s weight, uneven metres and psychedelic modality without metal’s display or punk’s thinness
Mythos
Captivity and breakout built in one song; the crucifixion turned into an image of fraud; holy water, the bulldozer and the flies evoked as images
Phase
Twelve tracks; four long, required songs up front, a release of pressure, a wide psychedelic space at the seventh, a looser second half and a slow, low close
Presentation
Album; twelve tracks, about fifty-eight minutes, the band’s third, produced by Terry Date with the band; the first with Ben Shepherd on bass
Register
A voice from croon to scream, a modal droning guitar, two guitars and a bass in low tunings, drums that make uneven metres swing; a dense, dark mix
Scale
One body under pressure: depression and self-contempt, religion as its abuse, power as sheer mass, and the body everywhere in the sound
Governing Proposition
A Seattle band on its third album, its sound already proved, sharpens and darkens it into a record in which everything is tuned low and pressed, and every song is a body under weight: straining against a cage, hiding behind a borrowed face, crushed by machinery, wearing suffering as a costume. It knows what pressure feels like from inside, and it says so more often in sound than in words.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens at a gallop and ends its first song at a crawl. Rusty Cage drives a fast riff for most of its length, a body throwing itself against the bars, and then in its last minute the tempo drops and the riff is ground out low and lopsided, as if the cage had given way and what came through it was weight, not speed. The escape is heavier than the confinement. That turn, from straining to grinding, is the record’s whole motion stated in its first four and a half minutes, and nothing that follows contradicts it.
Badmotorfinger was released by A&M on 8 October 1991, the band’s third studio album after Ultramega OK (1988) and Louder Than Love (1989). Terry Date produced it with the band: Chris Cornell on voice and guitar, Kim Thayil on guitar, Matt Cameron on drums, and Ben Shepherd on bass, on his first album with them. It runs twelve tracks and about fifty-eight minutes. It came out about two weeks after Nirvana’s Nevermind and some six weeks after Pearl Jam’s Ten, and it was nominated for the Grammy for Best Metal Performance.
Rusty Cage is also the one place where the record builds a myth rather than summoning one. The animal in the trap gnawing itself free is an old pattern, and here the song’s form enacts it: the cage of the fast riff, the break into slow weight. The pattern bears load, and the proof came five years later, when Johnny Cash recorded the song on Unchained (1996) and made it a convict’s song, carrying it out of heavy rock into American country and folk. A pattern that survives that translation is in the song’s structure, not only in its imagery.
Movement II
Outshined is where the record says most plainly what it knows. Two place names do it: “looking California” and “feeling Minnesota”, the self as it shows and the self as it is. The song moves in its verses from swagger to self-contempt, and its riff lurches as its speaker does, so that the gap the words name is also heard in the gait of the music. It is the clearest disclosure on the record, a condition stated and not only felt, and it is why the record’s knowledge is more than atmosphere.
Jesus Christ Pose names a second condition, and states it plainly: suffering worn as costume and sold as authority. The crucifixion is taken as an image of fraud, an allusion turned against those who use it. It is not a pattern rebuilt, as Rusty Cage’s captivity is; it is a charge laid. Placed fourth, it closes the record’s required opening, and the four songs between them carry the pressure in four forms: the body in the cage, the private low, the slow crush and the public lie.
Beyond those two songs, the writing is oblique by design. Rust, water, flies and damage are images that point toward a condition without articulating it, and the record’s knowledge is carried most of the time by its sound. Credited fully as disclosure through sound, that knowledge is real: the record knows what pressure feels like from inside a body. But it is a mood rendered with force more often than a meaning that can be stated, and where the words are obscure the obscurity seldom opens into depth. The record discloses most where it is most direct.
Movement III
Slaves & Bulldozers is the record’s height. It is a dirge nearly seven minutes long, slowed to the speed of machinery, and it renders domination as sheer mass: not argued, not described, but laid on the listener as weight. It ends with Cornell’s voice pushed to a scream over a riff that will not resolve. The sublime here is the dreadful kind, the height of a thing too heavy to move, and the song reaches it by refusing every release a faster song would offer. The sound discloses more than the words.
Height on this record is frequent and of one temperature. Rusty Cage’s drop from gallop to grind is a height; Outshined’s chorus lifts by sheer register; Searching with My Good Eye Closed opens out into the widest space on the record. Nearly all of it is dark and heavy. The rare warmer height, the open melody of Somewhere, is modest, and in the second half the climaxes repeat a shape the first half made, so the heights come less often and lower. The record rises often, in one direction.
The making is of a very high order. Cameron carries uneven metres as though they were common time, and makes them swing rather than display. Cornell’s voice runs from croon to scream and is placed with control at every point between. Thayil’s tone is distinct and exact, and Shepherd’s bass gives the low tunings their floor. The cost is in the mix: dense, in places muddy, the guitars and bass crowding one low register, and the voice sometimes pressed into the wall of sound rather than set against it. The making is load-bearing in perhaps half the tracks and skilled throughout.
Movement IV
After Jesus Christ Pose the record lets the pressure go, on purpose. Face Pollution is over in under two and a half minutes at punk speed, and Somewhere follows with the most melodic song on the album. Then, seventh, comes Searching with My Good Eye Closed, six and a half minutes and the record’s widest space. Thayil’s guitar drones in a mode that sounds older than the riff beneath it, and the song opens out where the others press in. Its title names a willed half-blindness, a looking that chooses not to see.
The departures from inheritance are clearest here and in the opening four. The band’s inheritance was Black Sabbath’s metal, Led Zeppelin’s hard rock and American punk, already joined on two records. What it added was riffs in odd and uneven metres carried as songs, deeper tunings used for weight in an alternative frame, a lead guitar that drones and refuses the metal solo’s virtuosic arc, and horns and saxophone on a heavy record. The stake was moderate: a major-label band sharpening a proved sound, not wagering against it.
After the seventh track the sequence loosens. About 39 per cent of the record’s time lies in its first four songs, and the second half is permitted more than compelled: Mind Riot restates Outshined’s interior at a lower heat, and it, Drawing Flies and Holy Water could be shuffled without changing what the record argues. Drawing Flies and Holy Water could leave it with little loss. Some thirteen to fifteen minutes of fifty-eight are present because an album of its time ran to that length. Form is the instrument within the songs, and more often a container across the whole.
Movement V
New Damage ends the record slow and low, and with intent. After a looser second half the close returns to the weight the record began with, as if the body that broke out of the cage in the first song had only found a heavier floor. Across the twelve tracks one law holds: everything is tuned down, heavy and pressed, and every song is a body under weight. The voice and the guitar sound are constant from first track to last, and the darkness of tone never breaks, from Face Pollution’s sprint to the crush of Slaves & Bulldozers.
The law holds without strain because it is not asked to hold much. It is partly a narrowness of palette, and the range it covers, punk to psychedelia to dirge, is moderate; the horns and saxophone sit as colour rather than widening it. The orders of reality the record holds are few: the depressed and self-despising mind, religion as its abuse, power as mass, the body everywhere in the sound. They are set side by side, sharing a mood but not a structure, and the family, labour, history and the natural order are absent or present only as images. The figure describes the form.
Thirty-five years on the record is whole and still heard. Rusty Cage and Outshined have stayed in rock radio, attention returned after Cornell’s death in 2017, and players return to its riffs and its handling of metre. It lives in part in the shadow of the band’s later Superunknown, and its dense production fixes it to the Seattle wave. In its field it showed how heavy the alternative album could be, though Nevermind and Ten moved more of that field in the same autumn. It is a serious and lasting heavy record whose force is in its sound, and it says what it knows more often by weight than by statement.
Act III · The Twelve
The opening four are required. Rusty Cage states the record’s motion, a body straining against confinement, and its last minute, where the tempo drops and the riff is ground out low and lopsided, is the escape as weight rather than speed. Outshined, Slaves & Bulldozers and Jesus Christ Pose each carry a different part of the pressure: the private low, the slow crush, the public lie. Searching with My Good Eye Closed, the widest space, is required too. The subtractive test then finds give. Drawing Flies and Holy Water could leave with little loss, Mind Riot restates Outshined at a lower heat, and Somewhere is permitted, not compelled: some 13 to 15 minutes of 58.
Score: 7.5 / 10
What the record brings into the open is real and mostly carried as mood. Its sharpest statement is in Outshined: “looking California” and “feeling Minnesota” state, in two place names, the gap between a self as it shows and as it is, and the song’s turn from swagger to self-contempt is a meaning, not only an atmosphere. Jesus Christ Pose names a second condition plainly, suffering worn as costume and sold as authority. Slaves & Bulldozers renders domination as sheer mass, and the sound discloses more there than the words. Held back because much of the writing is oblique by design: rust, water, flies and damage point toward a condition without articulating it.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Height is frequent and of one kind: the sublime of mass and of the voice at its limit. Slaves & Bulldozers is the summit, a dirge slowed to the speed of machinery, ending in Chris Cornell’s voice pushed to a scream over a riff that will not resolve. Rusty Cage’s last minute drops from gallop to grind, and the drop is the height. Searching with My Good Eye Closed opens into the record’s widest space, Kim Thayil’s guitar droning in a mode that sounds older than the riff beneath it. What holds the figure: the elevation is nearly all dreadful and heavy, and the second half’s climaxes repeat a known shape.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Myth is built in one song and evoked elsewhere. Rusty Cage is a myth of captivity and breakout, the animal in the trap gnawing free, and its form enacts it: the cage of a fast riff, then the break into slow weight. Johnny Cash heard the pattern and made it a convict’s song on Unchained (1996), evidence that it bears load. Jesus Christ Pose takes the crucifixion as an image of fraud, an allusion turned against its users rather than a pattern rebuilt. Holy Water, the bulldozer, the thousand-year room and the flies are images with depth in them, not assembled into a structure. The particular is strong; the archetypal is mostly atmosphere.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The inheritance is heavy metal from Black Sabbath, hard rock from Led Zeppelin and American punk, which the band had already joined on two records. The departures: riffs set in odd and uneven metres and carried as songs, not as display; deeper tunings used for weight in an alternative frame; a modal, droning lead guitar that refuses the metal solo’s virtuosic arc; horns and saxophone on a heavy record. The stake was moderate. The band had a major-label contract and a sound already proved on Louder Than Love (1989), and this record is that sound sharpened and darkened, not a wager against it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Would a different form change what the record knows? In the songs, yes: the meaning of Rusty Cage and Slaves & Bulldozers is in their changes of tempo and metre, and a straighter form would know less of pressure. Outshined’s lurching riff is the self-contempt its words state. Across the album, less so. The sequence is front-loaded, about 39 per cent of the time in the first four tracks, and after Searching with My Good Eye Closed the order is permitted: Mind Riot, Drawing Flies and Holy Water could be shuffled without changing the argument. Face Pollution and Somewhere release the pressure with intent, and New Damage closes slow and low on purpose.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Thirty-five years supply evidence, bounded. The record keeps yielding musically: listeners and players return to it for Matt Cameron’s handling of uneven metres, which he makes swing rather than display, for the voicing of Thayil’s drones, and for the interplay of two guitars and a bass in low tunings. The riffs repay study, and guitarists still learn them. Semantically the yield is narrower. The lyrics are oblique, and their obscurity does not open into depth on most songs; once heard, Holy Water and Drawing Flies have given what they have. Critical attention exists but is modest, chiefly an argument about which of the band’s albums is the strongest.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is heavy and alternative rock of the early 1990s. The intrinsic force is real: the record showed that metal’s weight, uneven metres and psychedelic modality could be carried inside the alternative album, without metal’s display and without punk’s thinness. The reach is real but shared and hard to particularise: Nevermind, at 8.8 here, and Ten, at 8.4, moved more of the field that year, and much of the reach credited to the band runs through Superunknown. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Cash’s Rusty Cage carried the song into American country and folk, and the record’s place in the education of alternative metal guitarists is real but diffuse.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirty-five years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording as released survives intact and is heard as an album. Presence is continuous and narrower than the band’s widest: Rusty Cage and Outshined have stayed in rock radio and on playlists, and attention returned after Cornell’s death in 2017; but the record lives somewhat in the shadow of Superunknown, at 8.0 here, more often named than played whole. The surface is fixed to its moment in places, in Terry Date’s dense early-nineties production and in the record’s standing as an artifact of the Seattle wave. Those charges hold it at the line.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The playing is of a very high order: Cameron carries uneven metres as if they were common time; Cornell’s voice holds a wide range and is placed with control from croon to scream; Thayil’s tone and drones are distinct and exact; Ben Shepherd’s bass gives the low tunings their floor. The arrangements are tight, and the dynamics of Rusty Cage’s last minute are judged to the bar. The costs are in the mix, dense and in places muddy, the guitars and bass crowding one low register and the voice pressed into the wall rather than set against it, and in a second half that falls into a known shape.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Face Pollution’s two-minute sprint at punk speed and the slow crush of Slaves & Bulldozers. One law governs them: everything is low, tuned down, heavy and pressed, and every song is a body under weight. The voice and the guitar sound are constant, and the darkness of tone does not break. But the law is partly a narrowness of palette, and narrowness is not coherence. The range covered, from punk to psychedelia to dirge, is moderate, and the horns and saxophone sit as colour, not as a widening the law absorbs. One physics holds because it is not asked to hold much.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Consciousness is held most fully: depression and self-contempt in Outshined and Mind Riot. Religion appears as its abuse, in Jesus Christ Pose and, by its title at least, Holy Water. Power and domination appear in Slaves & Bulldozers, and the body is present everywhere in the sound. What holds the figure lowest is absence and division: the family, labour, history and the natural order are absent or present only as images of rust, flies and water, and what is present is set side by side, not integrated; the religious songs and the inward songs share a mood but not a structure. A fifty-eight-minute heavy record is limited by its form, and the figure describes the form.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Made at 8.3 and The Sublime at 8.2. A recording whole after thirty-five years, its two best-known songs still in rock radio and its riffs still learned; playing of a very high order, uneven metres carried as common time and a voice placed from croon to scream; and a frequent height of mass and of the voice at its limit, from Rusty Cage’s last minute to Slaves & Bulldozers.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: the depressed mind, religion as its abuse, power as mass and the body held side by side, sharing a mood but not a structure, with the family, labour, history and the natural order absent or present only as images. Then The Archetypal Deep at 7.2, where one myth is built, in Rusty Cage, and the rest are evoked as images, and The Unconcealment at 7.4, where Outshined and Jesus Christ Pose state a condition and the rest of the record carries it as mood.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5, on the line and with no room. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.6, The Made at 8.3, The Inner Law at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.5 meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but Pressure on Tradition at 7.7, The Swerve at 7.6, The Unconcealment at 7.4 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.2 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.2, and The Unconcealment, 7.4, both below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by A&M on 8 October 1991, twelve tracks in their original order on compact disc, cassette and vinyl, about fifty-eight minutes, produced by Terry Date with the band: Chris Cornell (voice, guitar), Kim Thayil (guitar), Ben Shepherd (bass) and Matt Cameron (drums). Judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate, summed from track lengths that may be out by a few seconds. Later reissues are not the object. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the metres and tunings of particular songs, the writing credits of particular tracks, which tracks carry the horns and the saxophone, the sources of particular sounds, the history of earlier versions, the contents and dates of the reissues, the subject of New Damage, the chart positions and certifications, and any later work said to take its name from the record, are not given.