My Amazon Reviews: Soundgarden "Telephantasm"

Minor Harvest
4 Out Of 5 Stars

The second "best of" release from Soundgarden was meant to correspond to a version of Guitar Hero. While the earlier "A-Sides" is a beefier collection, this CD pares down to 12 songs. Of course, you can splurge and jump up to the double disc that has live versions and B-sides. However, Soundgarden is a decent collection of one of the most influential of the Seattle bands, along with Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Soundgarden mixed the sludgy hard riffs of Black Sabbath and Led Zepplin with the attitude of the Grunge period. Lead singer Chris Cornell is a world class frontman, whose vocal style ranged from a screaming wail to hushed psychedelia. Kim Thyall remains a terrific guitarist, with versatility that grew the longer the band existed. Soundgarden also followed the classic career arc; really good rock band starts indie (the Sub-Pop single, "Hunted Down"), start finding their chemistry ("Hands All Over" from "Louder Than Love") gel completely (the incredible "Rusty Cage" from "Bad Motor Finger") and then cut a classic for the ages (all the cuts from "Superunknown"). Then they begin to unravel (still great "Blow Up The Outside World") as they cut the swansong album. But they still cut three great hard rock albums, and one world class single/video in the swirling drone of "Black Hole Sun."

There are two bonus reasons to have "Telephantasm." "Birth Ritual" from the movie "Singles" is included, and the new song that brought Soundgarden to reunion, "Black Rain," is better than expected. Granted, a copy of "A-Sides" and "Superunknown" is likely all the Soundgarden you'll probably ever need, but for a best of, this single disc does the job.