Stephen
I still remember clearly I bought this tape when it came out in 1994 because of the track “Black Hole Sun" and grunge wave had reached its top before a new and fresh alternative rock began swelling in. "Superunknown" apparently is the band's breakthrough album, spawning five singles, and certified five platinums in the US, but behind their commercial success and after all these years, I never been able to digest their music nicely. Perhaps because their musical style isn't really my type of interest, but on the other hand, probably the majority of the songs here are plain dull and this album was overly exaggerated by MTV and label.
From my subjective point of views, there are several of really great songs here. I'll start with the single "My Wave", I found an interesting groovy arrangement inside. The next one, is the other single, "Black Hole Sun", which is very nostalgic and introduced Cornell's clear voice, a radio friendly track and a lovable piece, even to non-rock listeners. The third one is the uptempo punchy track, "Kickstand", but a shame that this is only a 1.3 minutes track. The other listenable tracks are "Let Me Drown", "Fell On Black Days", the title track, and "The Day I Tried To Live", but the rest are pointless, terribly average, and some of them are even worst. Tracks like "Spoonman", "Limo Wreck", or "Half" are good examples of utilizing the player's skip button.
The nuance on this album is dark and depressive, accompanied by doom-laden arrangement, slow and dynamic tempo, and alternative tunings which is typical in grunge-style music. To me, "Superunknown" isn't a horrible album, but ain't great either. There are just too many fillers and decent tracks. I buy this disc just for the sake of couple of great tracks I mentioned above, and to bring a good memory of how hard I save my pennies for days just to buy the tape, more than 15 years ago.