Badmotorfinger

Badmotorfinger is the third studio album by American rock band Soundgarden, released on October 8, 1991, through A&M Records. Soundgarden began the recording sessions for the album with new bassist Ben Shepherd in early 1991. The album maintained the band's heavy metal sound, while featuring an increased focus on songwriting compared to the band's previous releases. AllMusic considered the album's music to be "surprisingly cerebral and arty"; alternative tunings and odd time signatures were present on several of the album's songs, and lyrics were intended to be ambiguous and evocative.

The focus on the Seattle grunge scene helped bring attention to Badmotorfinger, and the singles "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" found a major audience in rock radio and MTV. Badmotorfinger became the band's highest charting album at the time on the Billboard 200, where it peaked at number 39. The album received critical acclaim, citing the significant improvements over earlier releases and evolution in the band's sound. Soundgarden supported the album with tours of North America and Europe, including opening for Guns N' Roses on the Use Your Illusion Tour. In 1992, Badmotorfinger was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1996.

Badmotorfinger has been classified by various critics as grunge, alternative metal, heavy metal and hard rock. Steve Huey of AllMusic said the songwriting on the album "takes a quantum leap in focus and consistency", adding: "It's surprisingly cerebral and arty music for a band courting mainstream metal audiences, but it attacks with scientific precision." Guitarist Kim Thayil jokingly called it the "Heavy Metal White Album". Frontman Chris Cornell said, "I think there's songs on the new record which are almost more commercially viable because they have that memorable feel to them, and I think if anyone expected us to come out and make something more commercial than Louder Than Love [the band's previous album], then I'm glad that they were surprised." He added that the album was more representative of how the band was live.

Compared with Louder Than Love, the band took a more collaborative approach to the writing process for Badmotorfinger. It was Soundgarden's first album with bassist Ben Shepherd, who replaced Jason Everman in April 1990, and Cornell said Shepherd brought a "fresh and creative" approach to the recording sessions, while the band as a whole said his knowledge of music and writing skills redefined the group. Before joining, Soundgarden had been Shepherd's favorite band. Shepherd contributed the song "Somewhere" and collaborated on the musical composition of several other songs on the album, as did Thayil and drummer Matt Cameron. Thayil said Shepherd's contributions helped make the album "faster" and "weirder".

Several of the album's songs utilize alternative tunings, such as "Rusty Cage", "Searching with My Good Eye Closed", and "Holy Water" (on all of which the bottom E string of the guitars is tuned down to B), and "Mind Riot" (on which every string is tuned to one of several octaves of E). There are also some unusual time signatures on the album, "Outshined" is partially in 7/4 and "Face Pollution" is in 9/8. Thayil claimed the band did not deliberately pursue unusual meters, but rather was the result of a "push to get the quirkiness out of things".

Regarding the lyrics, Cornell said he tried to not get too specific and was more interested in letting ambiguity "[create] colourful images." Thayil compared listening to the album to "reading a novel [about] man's conflict with himself and society, or the government, or his family, or the economy, or anything." Cornell said "Outshined" is about going from "periods of extreme self-confidence" to "plummeting in the opposite direction". "Jesus Christ Pose" was written about famous people who exploit the symbol of Jesus' crucifixion to suggest they're persecuted by the public. Thayil wrote the lyrics for "Room a Thousand Years Wide", and said the song is about "experience in general". "Holy Water" was written about people who force their beliefs onto others. "New Damage" subtly criticizes the right-wing government of the United States.

The album was recorded in early 1991 at Studio D in Sausalito, California, Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington, and A&M Studios in Los Angeles, California. Soundgarden chose to work with producer Terry Date, as it had on Louder Than Love, because, according to Cornell, the band had a good relationship with Date and did not want to go through the pressure of trying to find a new producer. One example of the innovative techniques used to record the album is that, for the opening song, "Rusty Cage", Thayil used a wah pedal as an audio filter, which resulted in an unusual guitar sound he said produced a guitar riff that "almost sounds backward".

The Badmotorfinger logo on the cover of the album was drawn by guitarist Mark Dancey of the Sub Pop band Big Chief and consists of a jagged, cyclone-like design, in the center of which is a triangle that has the album's title along the interior perimeter and a spark plug in the middle. Thayil suggested the title Badmotorfinger as a joke on the Montrose song "Bad Motor Scooter" and said, regarding the title: "It was sort of off the top of my head. I simply like it because it was colorful. It was kinda aggressive, too ... It conjures up a lot of different kinds of images. We like the ambiguity in it, the way it sounded and the way it looked."