Soundgarden: Ultramega OK: Expanded Reissue

When Soundgarden released Ultramega OK in 1988, it came out a day before Sub Pop dropped Nirvana’s debut 7” and just a few months after Mudhoney’s first single. The cultural explosion of “grunge” was still to come, and metal was on life support while the masses were waiting for their whiffs of teen spirit.
Soundgarden themselves were still a few years away from sorting out their own sound. The band—vocalist/guitarist Chris Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron, and then-bassist Hiro Yamamoto—had already released a couple of EPs, Screaming Life and Fopp, which fused punk rock with prog, indie and metal, resulting in an interesting, but slightly unfocused amalgam. The building blocks for their 1991 breakthrough Badmotorfinger were there, just scattered about.
The newly remixed reissue of Ultramega OK is a long time coming—the members haven’t been happy with the original mix by Drew Canulette since its release on SST nearly three decades ago. Soundgarden tapped producer Jack Endino, the man they originally wanted to remix the record, to come in and make things right. Which he’s done. Songs like “Nazi Driver” and their cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning” lurch to life like Frankenstein’s monster, and the entire record feels warmer and more balanced.