Soundgarden - Screaming Life / Fopp (2LP)

Screaming Life/Fopp is the moment Soundgarden steps out of the basement and lets the room shake. Sub Pop issued this compilation in 1990, folding the band’s first two EPs into one release, and it still feels like a dispatch from Seattle when everything was crackling with new electricity. The sound is raw but deliberate. You can hear the band locking in. Chris Cornell is finding that sky-splitting voice. Kim Thayil is carving riffs into slabs. Matt Cameron and Hiro Yamamoto keep the whole thing rumbling forward like an old truck that just won’t stall.

The Screaming Life half was recorded with Jack Endino at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle in 1987, and you can tell. Endino’s ear for live room energy is all over these tracks. Hunted Down opens with a serrated riff and a rhythm section that feels both tight and unruly. It was an early single for the band and still sounds like a mission statement. Nothing to Say slows the tempo but throws even more weight at you, the chorus lifting on Cornell’s voice until it almost turns into a siren. Tears to Forget flashes their hardcore roots in two minutes of churn, then Hand of God closes with eerie atmosphere and a stretched-out, hypnotic stomp. You can almost picture the lights dimming at the old Vogue or Central Tavern when this one rolled out, heads nodding along, everyone realizing the band on stage wasn’t like the others.

Flip to the Fopp material and the mood tilts toward playfulness without losing any bite. Produced by Steve Fisk in Seattle in 1988, the title track takes an Ohio Players funk cut and runs it through rusted gears until it grooves in steel-toed boots. Then Fisk pushes it further with the Fucked Up Heavy Dub mix, a blown-out, echoing version that leans into space and repetition. It’s a small window into how experimental the scene could be before the world showed up. Swallow My Pride, a Green River cover, ties the Seattle family tree into a neat knot. Cornell belts it like a barroom challenge while Thayil slices through with a tone that could cut rain. The band doesn’t treat the source material like a museum piece. They make it theirs.

Part of what makes Screaming Life/Fopp so compelling is the way it captures Soundgarden’s range before the major-label gloss of Louder Than Love and Badmotorfinger. Thayil’s love of odd tunings and modal riffs is already present, but it’s Cameron who keeps stealing scenes with sharp, musical drumming that never stays in one lane. Yamamoto’s bass lines are thick and present in the mix, less a support beam and more a second engine. Cornell is the obvious draw, yet the band’s chemistry is the star. These are four players already behaving like lifers.

If you came to Soundgarden through Superunknown or the singles on classic rock radio, this set feels like a trip back to the source. You can hear the blueprint for that later heaviness, but you also get flashes of punk economy and art-damaged curiosity that would never fully disappear. Critics have long pointed to these EPs as foundational documents from the Sub Pop era, and it’s easy to hear why. They sit right alongside early Mudhoney and Tad as a snapshot of a label documenting its neighborhood in real time.

For anyone crate-digging, Screaming Life/Fopp vinyl is a satisfying pickup. Sub Pop has kept this material in circulation, and reissues have made it easier to hear these songs without paying collector prices. If you like the feel of guitars hitting air in a room, the mastering does them justice. It’s the kind of record that belongs next to the later Soundgarden albums on vinyl so you can trace the arc from grime to grandeur. If you shop locally, odds are good a Melbourne record store has a copy in the bins, and if you tend to buy Soundgarden records online, this is one to throw in the cart with the A&M-era LPs. Soundgarden vinyl always moves, but this one rewards repeat plays because of how alive it feels.

What lingers most is the personality. Screaming Life/Fopp doesn’t just predict where Soundgarden would go. It shows who they were in a small room with big ideas, making noise that felt like a new language. Thirty-plus years on, that language still hits. Put it on, let the first riff of Hunted Down bite, and you’ll remember why this city, this label, and this band rewired heavy music.