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@oleinar: if you feel like listening to them again, give this last one a try, you never know, it might surprise you. (I don't know what tracks are in the best) Merry Christmas to you too :) @purpulan: you're right, and I know it's my problem. Sometimes attachment takes the place of objectivity, and I believe that Black Hole Sun is a top-notch ballad. @pistolpete: Soundgarden are anything but experimenters; their pursuit is that of formal beauty, and I think that was the group's urgency, different from the assaults and heavy riffs of Badmotorfinger; this is music that pleases those who composed it first and foremost, before the "need to please" the audience’s discerning eye. Taking the term with a grain of salt, they've become more refined and "chamber-like," as ridiculous as that may sound when associated with a hard rock band :D Anyway, there's nothing wrong with being successful, I believe. Happy holidays to everyone!

Hello everyone. In my opinion, this continues the discourse started with superunknown, featuring tracks that are definitely less direct compared to their early works (by the way, my favorites are ultramega ok and superunknown), but with much more care in terms of production and arrangement, along with a bit more experimentation, sometimes successful and other times less so. The notion that superunknown is boring, I believe, stems from its length and not-so-fast tempos, but each track tells its own story and it's the album I've listened to the most by far precisely for its being so "layered" and, if you will, also monolithic. @donjunio: think that for me, blow up is the most boring one of all, it already feels like listening to audioslave :) @cornell: here, a good 70% of the tracks are actually by shepherd, thayil is responsible for just the music and lyrics of never the machine forever. I also think it’s perfect as a testament album. Thanks everyone for the comments =)

@stoney: nice Led Zeppelin IV, but are we sure it's more influential than this? in my opinion, you're being idiosyncratic towards the metal attitude, that's all.

icnarf: I didn’t mean to be aggressive, sorry. Obviously you can give as much weight as you want to the lyrics; for me, a beautiful text is a great added value, but it is not, however, THE content of an album. Giving a score of 1 to an album of a certain type flavored with neo-Nazi lyrics means either not knowing (or not wanting to, obviously) to grasp its purely aesthetic-musical value. The lyrics of this album are silly, it’s true, but in my opinion (of course) they thrash better musically than the others.

very interesting, beautiful review.

@gnagnera: you can say everything about my comment except that it's from a metalhead, given that the genre is usually quite far from my tastes. The album in question is not canonically "beautiful"; that's not the aesthetic standard within which Slayer wanted to express themselves, as for 29 minutes they grind out the usual two chords, accompanied by brutal and expressionless growls and a overwhelmingly isometric drum pattern. The solos are the climax; they "suck" and are anything but virtuosic or imaginative, they are cacophonous and serve as an outlet from the (few) geometries the pieces are forced into. It’s the quintessence of violence in music, a voluntary degeneration, which is why I believe it’s a masterpiece. I hope I’ve articulated my point decently. @icnarf: seeing the content aspect of music in lyrics leads you to a terrible misstep, (you do this in your comments on the CCCP review as well) one can grossly say that the form is the sounds, and the content is the attitude and the "musical concepts" expressed, the narrative. Araya's singing (at least in this album) is terrifyingly incisive regardless of the crap he spits into the microphone.

I quote the lux of comment 43. The content is just that.

The album is absolute; after about twenty minutes of continuous listening, it also becomes hallucinogenic. I agree with Bartle, and I add that if one had to choose an album as a paradigm of a genre and its highest expression, it could only be this one. There's no competition from Metallica or Megadeth (?!?). A masterpiece, a flurry of blows in an infernal circle.

Thank you for the comments. The birthday parties are the only thing I still need to listen to from Cave, I wouldn't know where to start. The review didn't really come out the way I wanted; I realize I don't have the right "contemplative distance" and my descriptive ability goes a bit down the drain. I don’t even tackle the albums up to "tender prey" (can it be said too much or too little), I might try again with the underrated (in my opinion) henry's dream. Best regards to everyone :)

this year we have them and twilight. one can do without it, sight unseen.