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**Soundgarden - Ultramega OK**
★★★★☆

In the fetid underground of mid-1980s Seattle, while hair metal poseurs were busy teasing their perms and practicing their windmill guitar moves, four longhairs were busy concocting something altogether more sinister in their rehearsal space. Soundgarden, featuring the towering Chris Cornell on vocals, Kim Thayil's sludge-heavy guitar work, Hiro Yamamoto's thunderous bass, and Matt Cameron's percussive assault, had already been terrorizing local venues and releasing limited-run EPs that hinted at something momentous brewing in the Pacific Northwest. By 1988, they were ready to unleash their full-length statement of intent.

*Ultramega OK* arrived like a meteorite crashing into the Reagan-era musical landscape, bringing with it the kind of crushing heaviness that made Black Sabbath sound like a church choir. This wasn't just another metal album – it was something far more interesting and infinitely more dangerous. The band had spent years absorbing influences that ranged from punk's raw aggression to metal's technical prowess, all while developing their own distinctly Northwestern approach to sonic brutality.

The album opens with "Flower," a deceptively melodic number that lures listeners into Cornell's web with its almost pop sensibilities before revealing its darker underbelly. It's a perfect encapsulation of what makes Soundgarden so compelling – their ability to craft songs that are simultaneously accessible and utterly uncompromising. Cornell's voice, already showing signs of the four-octave range that would later make him a household name, soars and growls with equal conviction.

"Head Down" follows with a grinding, hypnotic riff that showcases Thayil's unique approach to guitar playing. Unlike his contemporaries who favored flashy solos and technical showboating, Thayil was more interested in creating massive walls of sound that could level buildings. His use of alternate tunings and unconventional chord progressions gives the entire album an unsettling, otherworldly quality that sets it apart from standard metal fare.

The album's centerpiece, "Beyond the Wheel," is perhaps the clearest indication of where Soundgarden was heading. Clocking in at over five minutes, it's an epic journey through shifting dynamics and Cornell's increasingly confident vocal acrobatics. The song builds from a relatively restrained opening into a crushing finale that suggests the band was already thinking beyond the limitations of traditional song structures.

"665" and "667" – the numbers flanking the more famous beast – show the band's willingness to experiment with different approaches while maintaining their core heaviness. The former is a brief instrumental that serves as a palate cleanser, while the latter explodes with the kind of controlled chaos that would become a Soundgarden trademark.

What makes *Ultramega OK* so remarkable in retrospect is how it managed to predict and influence an entire musical movement. This was grunge before anyone knew what grunge was – a perfect synthesis of punk's DIY ethos, metal's power, and something indefinably Northwestern that would soon conquer the world. The production, handled by Drew Canulette with assistance from the band, captures the raw energy of their live performances while allowing each instrument to occupy its own sonic space.

The album's legacy cannot be overstated. While it may have initially flown under the radar commercially, selling modestly compared to the band's later major-label efforts, its influence on the emerging Seattle scene was immeasurable. Bands like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and even Nirvana would all draw from the template that Soundgarden established here – heavy but melodic, aggressive but thoughtful, underground but with mainstream potential.

Today, *Ultramega OK* stands as both a historical document and a thrilling listen in its own right. It captures a band on the verge of greatness, still rough around the edges but brimming with the kind of creative energy that can't be manufactured or replicated. In an era when alternative rock has been thoroughly corporatized and sanitized, the album serves as a reminder of what made the genre so exciting in the first place – the sense that anything could happen, and probably would.

For those seeking to understand how four guys from Seattle helped change the course of popular music, *Ultramega OK* remains essential listening.