Mudhoney - Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)

How could you knock a band who had a record with that name !!? A long story here, but before Nirvana became the most overrated band in history, and were credited with the birth of the mythical music genre known as 'grunge', a more interesting style of fuzzed up punk rock existed. It was often called 'sub-pop', mainly because most of the bands from the scene, who were Seattle based, emerged on the record label called Sub-Pop.
The sound was pretty much dirty, fuzzy and loud, lots of distortion, grimy riffs, yet not quite metal, more a fusion of discordant punk and at times a popzoid groove, and there were heaps of bands spilling from the cellars, the big boys were namely Mudhoney, Green River, Catt Butt, Blood Circus, Nirvana, Soundgarden et al, and it was pretty underground and very noisy.
Strangely, once Nirvana shed their fuzzy skin and become rock's biggest band, grunge died, and yet in the minds of MTV-obsessed kids it was also born, yet what the scene produced was far more of a polished, commercial scene, bringing with it a shinier Alice In Chains, a bigger Soundgarden and various other average bands such as My Sister's Machine. For me the greatest band to emerge from Seattle were Mother Love Bone, but for me Mudhoney's 'Superfuzz...' remains the true spirit of Sub-Pop.
These were bands who could write down and gritty cellar songs but also throw an element of subtlety, check out the pensive 'If I Think' and then the slamming 'Touch Me I'm Sick' for fuzz Heaven.
Some of this stuff is not too dissimilar to some of the '60s obscure garage-psych bands, but as the whole genre blew up in the face of society, it was bands like Mudhoney who become swamped and eventually phased out.
7/10