Screaming Life/Fopp (which compiles two late-Eighties EPs) is far less interesting when the group performs its own tunes than when it covers the Ohio Players (“Fopp”), while Ultramega OK, despite its texturally adventurous use of feedback and multitracking, squanders the band’s fevered inte... 

 Screaming Life/Fopp (which compiles two late-Eighties EPs) is far less interesting when the group performs its own tunes than when it covers the Ohio Players (“Fopp”), while Ultramega OK, despite its texturally adventurous use of feedback and multitracking, squanders the band’s fevered inte... 

 But Louder Than Love upgrades the melodic content and better exploits the contrast between Cornell’s keening vocals and Thayil’s slab-o-metal guitar grind, lending a sense of majesty to “Hands All Over,” and a dizzying, hypnotic power to “Loud Love.”  

 Badmotorfinger continues in that vein, from the relentless momentum of “Rusty Cage” and “Outshined” to the savage psychedelia of “Searching With My Good Eye Closed.” 

 But it’s with Superunknown that the band truly makes its mark. Although suffused with melancholy, it turned grunge on its head, painting downcast self-obsession in hues of grandeur, giving an epic sweep to “Fell on Black Days” and “The Day I Tried to Live.” Meanwhile, the semipsychedeli... 

 Soundgarden lost its edge soon after. Down on the Upside offers a reasonable simulacrum of the band’s sound and attitude but lacks anything in the way of a first-rate melody (though “Blow Up the Outside World” comes close). The group disbanded not long after, with Cornell going on to sing i... 

 The ironically titled A-Sides compiles what would have been the Soundgarden’s singles, had it ever released any.