Soundgarden released Ultramega OK on October 31, 1988, through SST Records. Their debut full-length captured the lineup of Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Hiro Yamamoto and Matt Cameron, with experiments that went beyond simply turning up the guitars. “Flower,” the opening track and the album’s only single, featured Thayil making sound by blowing across his instrument’s strings.
Thayil explained the setup to Guitar School in May 1994: he placed the guitar on the floor near the amplifier, allowing a low hum of feedback to develop, then blew across the strings in time with the drums. On “Beyond the Wheel,” the collaboration took another form. Cornell brought in a four-track demo but wanted something to fill the middle section. Thayil supplied a droning guitar part, and the recording also used a backward guitar introduction. These were specific solutions to what the songs needed, with feedback, breath and reversed sound becoming part of the arrangements.
The album also made room for the band’s sense of humor. “665” and “667” poked at heavy metal’s fixation on the number 666, while Cornell explained the title to Melody Maker in June 1989 as “absolutely, unbelievably not bad.” That irreverence sat alongside the heavier material. There was room to change singers, too: Yamamoto stepped forward for the lead vocal on “Circle of Power,” giving the bassist a different role within the record.
For Cornell, the material deserved a better presentation than it received. Soundgarden recorded the album with producer Drew Canulette, but the finished sound became a lasting frustration. Speaking to Kerrang! in August 1995, Cornell said leaving their familiar working environment had been a mistake. He believed the songs could have made it one of their strongest records, yet felt the production had interrupted their momentum because “it didn’t really sound like us.” His criticism concerned how the band had been captured, even as he continued to value the writing.
Soundgarden’s label arrangements were moving quickly around the debut. Cameron told Melody Maker in 1989 that they had signed with A&M before the SST album was released. The band considered remixing Ultramega OK for subsequent pressings, but work on Louder Than Love and their expanding career pushed that plan aside. The original album remained the version listeners knew while the musicians carried an unfinished task forward.
The opportunity finally came when Soundgarden recovered the original multitrack tapes in 2016. They entrusted the remix to Jack Endino, whose connection to the band reached back to Screaming Life. Sub Pop released the expanded edition on March 10, 2017. This was a return to the recorded performances, giving the band another chance to address the balance and presentation that had bothered them.
Endino later wrote that Cornell had been fully involved in the project and enthusiastic about it. The expanded edition also reached further back than the album sessions: six bonus recordings came from eight-track work Endino and Chris Hanzsek had done at Seattle’s Reciprocal Recording in 1987. Early versions of “Beyond the Wheel,” “Head Injury” and other songs accompanied the new mix, allowing listeners to hear stages of their development alongside the performances that became Soundgarden’s debut.
