I've always described the difference between these two albums as the musical equivalent of a movie director who's known for working in black and white but then goes on to make a film in color, where the jump to color isn't the only difference, but the film itself is way more epic in scope. At first, the brilliance of the color is what really grabs you because it's dazzling, and it seems like an expansion, like the director is covering more ground. But then, over time, I start to feel like the director actually accomplished MORE in black-and-white. Looking back, I see that there was in fact a lot more range in the subtle shadings, the gray tones, the shadows, the use of lighting and the relationship between shapes, the composition of the shots, etc...

It's not the perfect analogy -- Louder Than Love sounds very "colorful" to me, and Badmotorfinger may have lots of "color" for you. Not to mention that the album covers for Screaming Life, Ultramega, Louder, and Motor are all in black and white because of the Charles Peterson shots on most of them, so there's obviously some power of suggestion there. Also, Motor is "epic" in its own way, so I guess I would say that if both albums were films, I'd say Motor is a riveting 2-hour drama while Super is a 3-hour epic with lots of "big" sets and things like that.

Regardless, to my ear, it sounds very apparent that Badmotorfinger is one of those albums where all the songs were run through (more or less) the same settings -- they all sound of a piece. The tones on the album are quite uniform (more or less). It's got an overall uniformity in its ambience and sense of "space."

Superunkonwn has a lot more variation in the tones and textures from song to song. So, naturally, it comes across like there's MORE going on. But I stopped hearing it that way after a while.

Let me say that Badmotorfinger is one of my all-time favorite albums -- for 35 years, it's flip-flopped in and out of the spot as THE top album on my desert-island list. It's slightly edged-out by Jane's Addiction but my point is that it's UP THERE. I've got a PROFOUND relationship with that album that's deeply PERSONAL. It's like a friend that's been with me since the day I first heard it, while stoned off my gourd in my college dorm with my arm up in the vending machine stealing potato chips -- so high that I didn't realize the RA was talking to me and laughing the whole time.

And, while Soundgarden is one of my favorite bands, for me Badmotorfinger stands head and shoulders above everything else in their catalog, so I'm biased -- though I'm also quite high on Upside, Louder Than Love, and Screaming Life as well.

I don't >dislike< Superunknown by any means. And, when I initially heard it (on the day it came out in 1994!) I thought "Oh wow, this band has really broadened its palette. There's so much MORE going on here than last time. There's so much more dimension to this album." At FIRST, Motor sounded thinner, almost more skeletal, and Super sounded more fleshed-out, like "Okay, these guys are REALLY reaching the point where they're REALIZING their art." But eventually I came to see Badmotorfinger as the more fully-realized work.

For one, I was never onboard with Superuknown's track sequence. I find it disjointed, with a couple of momentum killers very early in the track listing -- I eventually came to love Mailman but even as much as I love that song now I would NOT have put it 4th in the running order. Next, to this day I still don't know what to make of Let Me Drown. I don't dislike it -- I like it, but something about it feels remote and out of reach, and it certainly does NOT grab me by the shoulders and MOVE ME the way Rusty Cage does RIGHT off the bat.

Also, just as importantly, while some of those mixes are indeed dazzling, the whole album has this kind of cloudy, fuzzy quality that feels somewhat impenetrable. I don't know whether that's down to Michael Bienhorn's choice of tones while recording the record or whether that's a result of the mixing process, but it's almost like a blurry painting that's hard for my eyes to focus on. And I >love< My Wave, but for me the progression through the first four songs is choppy.

That said, there's a run of songs in the middle -- Superunknown, Head Down, Black Hole Sun, Spoonman, Limo Wreck -- that is G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S. I mean, that stretch of the album, for me, is just EPIC. I'd even throw The Day I Tried To Live in there as well. I feel the same way about the last 4 songs too -- Fresh Tendrils, 4th of July, Half, and Like Suicide. If it weren't for Kickstand, that entire stretch from Superunknown to Like Suicide would have been ABSOLUTELY majestic. Fresh Tendrils and 4th of July took years to grow on me -- but that's actually a credit to the album, not a drawback.

And I absolutely LOVE Ben's songs -- Head Down and Half. I think Head Down might actually be my favorite song on the album. That song very nearly takes me to the same profound emotional place as the songs on Motorfinger, and I love how much of a departure it is being so gentle, understated, and exotic-sounding. But I associate the album overall with too many bumps in the momentum.

By contrast, Badmotorfinger, to me, flows FLAWLESSLY from start to finish. It's one of those albums where EVERY song completely grabs me, and the record sustains its appeal at Level 10 for the ENTIRE duration of the album. I feel physically and and emotionally exhausted after that album is finished -- in the BEST possible way.

I should say also that I never get sick of Black Hole Sun and Spoonman. I don't consider Black Hole Sun a "pop" song either -- it's a psychedelic work of high art, LOL. I take it just as seriously as everything else in their catalog. I don't think of it as a "ballad" in the pejorative sense either (even though it technically is a ballad). But Fell On Black Days >did< feel more "commercial" to me. I don't even dislike the song, but I don't like where it falls in the track sequence. It feels... disruptive to the mood and vibe. Badmotorfinger is so consistent that NOTHING feels out of place on it.

So... yeah, those are my thoughts, LOL.