超级未知数 (1994)

Superunknown is the fourth studio album by American rock band Soundgarden, released on March 8, 1994, through A&M Records. Produced by Michael Beinhorn and the band themselves, Soundgarden began work on the album after touring in support of their previous album, Badmotorfinger (1991). Superunknown retained the heaviness of the band's earlier releases while displaying a more diverse range of influences.

Superunknown was a critical and commercial success and became the band's breakthrough album. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 310,000 copies in its opening week. The album also topped the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand charts. Five singles were released from the album: "The Day I Tried to Live", "My Wave", "Fell on Black Days", "Spoonman", and "Black Hole Sun", the latter two of which won Grammy Awards and helped Soundgarden reach mainstream popularity. At the 37th Grammy Awards, the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. It has been certified 6× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. Superunknown has been listed by several publications as one of the best albums of the 1990s and a quintessential grunge album. In April 2019, it was ranked No. 9 on Rolling Stone's "50 Greatest Grunge Albums" list.

Recording

Soundgarden began work on its next album about two months after finishing its stint on the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. The individual band members wrote material on their own before bringing in demos to which the other members would contribute. Frontman Chris Cornell noted that the band allowed each other more artistic freedom than on previous records. Guitarist Kim Thayil observed that even though the band spent as much time writing and arranging as it had on previous albums, it spent a lot more time working on recording the songs. After two albums with producer Terry Date, the band decided to seek another collaborator. Thayil said, "We just thought we'd go for a change." Eventually they settled on producer Michael Beinhorn, who "didn't have his own trademark sound which he was trying to tack on to Soundgarden" and had ideas the band approved.

The album's recording sessions took place from July 1993 to September 1993 at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington, as according to Cornell "there was never a decent studio in Seattle and now there's one with a Neve console, so it seemed obvious to use it". Bad Animals' resident engineer Adam Kasper, who went on to produce Soundgarden's following albums, assisted Beinhorn on the recording process. Soundgarden took the approach of recording one song at a time. The drum and bass parts were recorded first for each song, and then Cornell and Thayil would lay down their parts over top. Cornell said that getting to know Beinhorn contributed to the length of time Soundgarden spent working on the album. The band spent time experimenting with different drum and guitar sounds, and utilized production techniques such as layering to achieve an expansive production sound. Cornell noted, "Michael Beinhorn was so into sounds. He was so, almost, anal about it, that it took the piss out of us a lot of the time... By the time you get the sounds that you want to record the song, you're sick and tired of playing it." Beinhorn tried to add many of his preferred musicians to mold the band's sound, in what Billboard described as "weaning the band from brute force, giving it the impetus to invest in a more subtle power." For instance, prior to tracking the vocals for "Black Hole Sun", Beinhorn had Cornell listen to Frank Sinatra.

Superunknown features 15 songs and a runtime of approximately 70 minutes because, according to Cornell, the band members "didn't really want to argue over what should be cut." Soundgarden paused the recording sessions to open for Neil Young on a ten-day United States tour. Afterward, the band hired Brendan O'Brien to mix the album because Beinhorn felt they needed "a fresh pair of ears"; O'Brien was recommended by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. Thayil called the mixing process "very painless", and bassist Ben Shepherd remembered it as "the fastest part of the record."

Behind-the-scenes footage of the band tracking and mixing "Kickstand" was featured in the "Sound" episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy.