Soundgarden "Superunknown" [1994]

Apparently, you can never overestimate Seattle residents' ability to act like complete sad-sacks, regardless how many fortunes land in their collective lap. Soundgarden, the first of the "grunge" bands to sign to a major label (though not surprisingly the last to meaningfully make the charts) hit the commercial peak of the movement with the release of "Superunknown," yet take a crap in their own punchbowl with song titles like "Fell On Black Days," "Head Down" and "Like Suicide." Gee, what misery you guys must have experienced, playing for tens of thousands of people per night and raking in millions of bucks! Is it really raining as hard in your souls as it is in your home town all the time? Or are you just trying to reinforce how darkly rawkin' you are (pretending to be)? I guess they didn't trust we'd hear the endless scrap-heap of Led Zep and Sabbath references. Although perhaps everything really is a drag for them: with all the odd time-signatures and drop-tuning rampant through "Superunknown," it's clear these guys were too stoned to remember where the "1" was, or how to properly tune a guitar. Compounded with Sammy Hagar-soundalike contest winner Chris Cornell's inane lyrical technique of pitting opposites against each other ("light is dark!" "bad is good!" "shallow is deep!"), the only thing "Superunknown" about this album is how they got so many suckers to buy it.