Before bands like Creed, Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd, Staind, etc. were mudding up the airwaves, there was a band from Seattle (no, I'm not talking about Nirvana) who kept their integrity from their indie days even when they won Grammys and had monster hits. This band was Soundgarden, and "A-Sides", a collection of mostly Soundgarden hits, is a nice collection that fans new to the band can use as a nice introduction. Though it is mostly compiled with the singles from later albums, we get songs from the Sub Pop days like "Flower" and "Loud Love". It would have been nice to see some more songs from the Sub Pop releases, but this is ok as we get well known songs (and fan favorites) "Jesus Christ Pose", "Rusty Cage", "Day I Tried to Live", and "Ty Cobb", and we get the monster hits "Outshined", "Black Hole Sun", and "Spoonman". We also get an unreleased track (from the "Down on the Upside" sessions) called "Bleed Together" which is a nice little track but ends too quickly. Being a big fan of Soundgarden no greatest hits package would be perfect, especially without songs like "My Wave", "Like Suicide", "Never the Machine Forever", and "Searching With My Good Eye Closed", all of which would have rounded this package out very nicely, but this is still a nice little collection (at least A&M Records isn't churning out pointless duplicate compilations every other year like Columbia does with Alice in Chains' catalog). All in all, this is a nice little collection that serves well as an introduction to one of the defining bands of the 90's.

As a huge Soundgarden fan, I guess the reason I give this "Greatest Hits" CD 2 stars is because I already own all the albums and there is nothing new here. Which is quite disappointing because there are some pretty awesome Soundgarden B-sides out there, including the dense and brooding "Blind Dogs" song they did for the "Basketball Diaries" soundtrack, the bouncy cute rock of "She Likes Surprises" from the European version of Superunknown, the excellent Devo cover of "Girl U Want", and the revved-up testosterone-laden "Kyle Petty, Son of Richard" from the obscure "Home Alive" CD. It would have been nice to include these rare cuts on a Soundgarden compilation album, the only one you get here is "Bleed Together" which is nothing to rave about.