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On March 8, 1994, Seattle rock band Soundgarden released their critically acclaimed fourth full length album, Superunknown, on A&M Records. An immediate #1 in the US, it earned the band two Grammy Awards, and sold millions of records worldwide. Considered Soundgarden’s masterpiece, the album yielded such iconic tracks as “Black Hole Sun,” “Spoonman,” and “Fell on Black Days,” and helped redefine alternative rock and change the course of music history.
In 2014, the band celebrates the 20th anniversary of this groundbreaking album with a special reissue, a new 2LP edition with the original 16 tracks remastered on 180-gram double vinyl and housed in a gatefold cover with slightly updated cover art.
Soundgarden’s strongest and most diverse effort, the aptly named Superunknown was co-produced with Michael Beinhorn. No track is entirely derivative of any previous or past release, though cuts like the album's powerful opener, "Let Me Drown," "Limo Wreck," and "Spoonman" carry on the soulful metallic blues that the band has made their own. Tracks like the emotive "Black Hole Sun" and "4th Of July," among others, also marked a massive growth in the band's songwriting.
Superunknown has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA in the US and has sold in excess of 9 million copies worldwide, making it the band’s most commercially successful release. “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman” won Grammy Awards in 1995, where Superunknown was also nominated for Best Rock Album. Rolling Stone magazine has ranked the album as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time as well as one of the 100 Greatest Albums of the Nineties.
"We made an album instead of a record that has a couple of good songs and filler. We made an album in the classic sense of the term which goes back to records we bought growing up in the seventies. Bands like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin made these records where every song counted and I think that's what we did." - Matt Cameron