I think it’s okay to get a little personal with you guys, lay down some serious stuff. I’m slowly coming out of a period in my life where I think I might have been going slowly insane. That period just happened to last for the majority of my 20s. My anxiety was through the roof. I felt unhealthy, very ugly too. I think it’s called, uh, depression. I’m still a little fragile, but I’m feeling a lot better these days. I listened to Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside right about when that period was in its early stages. 2018, out of university, working in my first job. It wasn’t the first time that I’d gone through the album. I think I initially downloaded it after Chris Cornell’s passing the previous year. But listening to it in the old office, over the speakers, the ideal setting was staged to focus my attention to the music and, to a lesser extent, the words. That’s just how I am, I’m sorry. Down on the Upside sort of became my album of the summer that year, which probably goes to show how I was feeling at the time. Dedicated a whole post about it, I was into it that much.

‘An Unkind’ is the penultimate track on the album. You think of Soundgarden, you’ll usually turn to vocalist, guitarist and usual songwriter Cornell for the goods. But people will know that the band’s secret weapon comes in the form of bass guitarist Ben Shepherd. On Down on the Upside, there are five songs that he wrote the music for to which Chris Cornell wrote the words. ‘An Unkind’ is a 100% Shepherd composition. Like ‘Half’ on Superunknown, another song solely written by Shepherd, ‘An Unkind’ takes proceedings into a stranger detour before everything comes to an end with the final-statement Cornell song. It also… rips really hard. I remember hearing the song through the speakers in my office that time. The guitars were alternating between those two notes in the verses, what felt like for an endless period of time. They were rather repetitive, maybe even a little annoying. But then the chorus came in, “Ooon the stooorm, it’s tiiime to gooo”. Hell yes. It fell into the verses again, and my mind was made up, I really liked this song. I played it 36 times on Spotify in 2018. I don’t think that counts the private plays I may have done too. It’s only two minutes long, but it scratches that itch for me, don’t know what to tell you.

I honestly think the song’s about the Last Judgment/Judgment Day, and how if the saints were to come down from the heavens and determine whether we go to heaven or hell, we wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye because of the shame in the atrocities we’ve committed on this earth. And the “On the storm…” bit is basically signifying the end of the world. Is that a reach? Maybe. But it’s my interpretation. In any case, “The human race sucks” is the general message Shepherd provides in his lyrics. Cornell delivers them brilliantly, as he always did. You can hear him take a huge gasp of breath before he belts out that first chorus. Ben Shepherd plays the guitar on the track alongside lead guitarist Kim Thayil, apparently because there’s a need for the pinky finger to execute the verse riff, which Cornell couldn’t get down. Matt Cameron’s drumming is a thrill. You guys ever noticed how his pattern sort of reverses on itself during the verses after he strikes the open hi-hat? That’s some good musicality. Sometimes I think this might be my favourite Soundgarden song. It won’t be for many other people, and that’s fine. But like the band say in the link before, it’s driving, it’s fast, the lyrics are strange and cool at the same time, and it does everything it needs to in the length it lasts for. Any more than two minutes, it’d just be wrong. And it leaves you wanting more, which probably explains why I listen to it so much.