Soundgarden- BadMotorFinger (1991)

I first discovered Soundgarden a couple of years after this album was released, so the first of their stuff I heard as a seventeen year old (on a coach on route from here in sunny Leicestershire on a school ski trip to Austria in December 1994, via Sony Walkman) was Superunknown- and that is considered to be their signature album. But BadMotorFinger, admittedly a favourite of mine a little later on, is their best.

Not that their three subsequent albums were not excellent and groundbreaking, of course; nor that the much missed Cris Cornell didn't go on to achieve great things or to improve his voice in middle age- if not for his horrible death I'm sure he'd have further greatness ahead of him.

But this album is indisputably a masterpiece. "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" are the big singles we're supposed to prefer, and I like them well enough, but the overall standard is extraordinarily good with complex song structures and no filler- "Outshined" and "Room a Thousand Years Wide" perhaps being my favourites. It's an album that rewards listen after listen, and one of the greatest of all time.