Soundgarden will re-release a standard single LP vinyl of their second full-length studio album, 1989’s ‘Louder Than Love’ as well as a two-LP 180-gram vinyl 20th anniversary reissue of their seminal 1996 album, ‘Down on the Upside’. Both come with download cards to include 320kbps MP4 AACs, to be released by UMe on August 26.
‘Louder Than Love,’ Soundgarden’s second full-length studio album and major label debut, was originally released by A&M Records on September 5, 1989, and was the last to include bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Recorded with producer Terry Date at Seattle’s London Bridge Studios, it announced the arrival of a major force on the emerging Pacific Northwest rock scene, later to include Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The album peaked on the Billboard chart at #108, yielding the singles, Loud Love, Hands All Over and the radio-only promo Get on the Snake, the latter of which was featured in the 1989 movie Lost Angels. Guns N’ Roses later paid tribute to the band by covering Big Dumb Sex on their 1993 album, The Spaghetti Incident? as part of a medley with T. Rex’s Buick MacKane. Q magazine named the album one of the “50 Heaviest Albums of All Time” in 2001. UMe is now releasing ‘Louder Than Love’ in a single-LP 180-gram vinyl edition on August 26, newly remastered from the original analog tapes.
‘Down on the Upside,’ Soundgarden’s fifth full-length studio album, released on May 21, 1996, debuting at #2 on theBillboard 200, represented a significant stylistic departure away from alternative metal into a more experimental sound with an emphasis on vocals, melody and more diverse instrumentation. Entertainment Weekly compared the results favorably to Led Zeppelin in the way the album “so crisply mixed instruments both acoustic and electric.” At the time, Cornell described several of the songs as “self-affirming” and “autobiographical” while the singles, Pretty Noose, Burden in My Hand and Blow Up the Outside World, all scored high on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart, the latter two going #1, with Pretty Noose nominated for a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. All three singles also scored on the Modern Rock chart, with Pretty Noose and Burden in My Hand peaking at #2 and Blow Up the Outside World at #8. Down on the Upsidewent to #1 in Australia and New Zealand and #7 in the U.K., sold 1.6 million copies in the U.S. and was certified platinum by the RIAA. Now, UMe has made ‘Down on the Upside’ available for the first time as a two-LP 180-gram vinyl set, newly remastered from the original analog tapes.
Track listings:
Louder Than Love
(one-LP vinyl)
Side One
Ugly Truth
Hands All Over
Gun
Power Trip
Get on the Snake
Full on Kevin’s Mom
Side Two
Loud Love
I Awake
No Wrong No Right
Uncovered
Big Dumb Sex
Full On (Reprise)
Down on the Upside
(two-LP vinyl)
Side One
Pretty Noose
Rhinosaur
Zero Chance
Dusty
Side Two
Ty Cobb
Blow Up the Outside World
Burden in My Hand
Never Named
Side Three
Applebite
Never the Machine Forever
Tighter & Tighter
No Attention
Side Four
Switch Opens
Overfloater
An Unkind
Boot Camp
For more information on Soundgarden, visit soundgardenworld.com.
