On August 5, 1989, "Soundgarden" released their second album, "Louder Than Love".
Let us tell you some interesting facts about this album:
1. The album was recorded at the London Bridge Studios in Seattle in less than two months, between December 1988 and January 1989.
2. This is the band's last album with its original bassist Hiro Yamamoto. During the recordings, he began to distance himself from the band members, contributed less to writing, and also noted that he no longer enjoyed performing. Chris Cornell noted that Hiro just got tired of being a musician.
3. The album was originally supposed to be named "Louder Than Fuck" but the record company objected.
4. This is the band's first album to enter the Billboard 200.
5. 7 out of the 12 songs on the album were written exclusively by Chris Cornell.
6. Three singles "Loud Love", "Get on the Snake" and "Hands All Over" were released from the album.
7. The song "Loud Love" appears in the movie "Wayne's World". It's played in the background when Wayne meets Cassandra, but he does not appear on the soundtrack album.
8. The song also appears in the soundtrack of the movie "Lost Angels" from 1989.
9. The album earned the dubious Parental Advisory sticker and even caused marketing problems at a number of record stores that refused to sell it, mainly due to the lyrics of two songs: "Hands All Over" which included the line "kill your mother" and "Big Dumb Sex", which included The word "Fuck" throughout.
10. The music video of the song "Get on the Snake" was released only in 2010.
10. The single "Hands All Over" began a tradition to include cover versions on the B-Side. The B-Side in this case was the Beatles' "Come Together."
11. The song was written as a protest song about the destruction of the earth by humans.
12. The song "Big Dumb Sex" was a kind of parody of the glam metal bands that used to include thick hints about sex in the lyrics.
13. "Guns N 'Roses" performed a cover version of the song "Buick Makane ("Big Dumb Sex") included on the album "The Spaghetti Incident?"
14. Guitarist Kirk Hammett noted that he wrote the riff for the song "Enter Sandman" after listening to this album.
15. The cover of the single "Deep Set" by the singer Greg Puciato is a homage to the album cover.
16. Beyond the twelve songs on the album, the band recorded two more songs that were left out. "Fresh Deadly Roses" which was included as a cover for the single "Loud Love" and "Heretic" was included as a second cover for the song "Hands All Over" (the first was the cover version of "Come Together" as mentioned). Both songs were later included in the 1990 EP "Loudest Love".
17. The song was first recorded in 1986 and was intended for the Deep Six collection, but was re-recorded during the sessions of the album. The song was also included in the soundtrack of the movie "Pump Up the Volume" starring Christian Slater, which was released in 1990.
18. Another track recorded during the sessions was "Twin Tower", but it was only released as part of the triple compilation album "Echo of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across the Path" which was released in 2014.
19. The singer and roommate of Chris, Andrew Wood was found dead from a heroin dose after Soundgarden returned from the tour that promoted this album. This tragic event severely affected Cornell and was the trigger for the project and the album "Temple of the Dog".
20. In a large part of the album's songs the instruments are tuned in the drop D tuning, which is lower than the standard tuning, which gives the album its dark and heavy sound.
21. The special tuning of the instruments and the heavy riffs on the album led to the obvious comparison to the band Black Sabbath. Despite this, guitarist Kim Thayil noted that the band wanted to avoid being cataloged as a heavy metal band and therefore noted that they were influenced by bands like Killing Joke and Bauhaus.
(Photo: vinylchapters.com)
22. Some of the album's songs are played in unusual asymmetrical rhythms, such as "Get On The Snake" with a 9/4 rhythm and "I Awake" with rhythms of 9/8, 11/8, and 14/8.
23. The song "Full on Kevin's Mom" was written by Cornell about a friend of his who slept with another friend's mother.
24. The lyrics of the song "I Awake" were part of a letter written by Kate McDonald - the girlfriend of bassist Yamamoto.
25. In 2011 the album was included in Q Magazine's list of the 50 heaviest albums in metal.
26. In 2017, the album was ranked 69th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 best metal albums of all time.
Listen to the album on: Spotify, Apple Music