Ultramega OK was Soundgarden's first full-length release, coming out on SST Records. Chris, Kim, Matt, and Hiro definitely entered with a splash. Two previous EPs (Screaming Life and Fopp) were a good indication of what was in the works for this Seattle band. This CD does have it's share of filler (i.e. a cover of Smokestack Lightning, and a cover? of Two Minutes of Silence by John Lennon and Yoko Ono..called One Minute of Silence (Soundgarden cut out Yoko Ono's half)). What it has in filler it makes up with an awesome set of songs. Flower has a wonderful power riff and touches of psychadelia. Beyond the Wheel is probably one of Soundgarden's best performances, although most people have never even heard of it. The whole thing is truly frightening. The lyrics, the dark, heavy, grinding guitars, and the vocals work together in an almost god-like fashion. I love the weird industrial sounding guitar noises that Kim makes during this song. They also flow amazingly well with the rest of the piece. Soundgarden also shows the first signs of their odd sense of humor on this CD. In the song 665, you can hear Chris singing backwards in the background of the song. A satanic message? If you can play the song backwards, you'll find that Chris is saying "Hey Santa, you're my Christmas king, Santa is king! Santa is king! Hey Santa, I love you baby! You got what I neeeeed," and so on. All in all, this album is an awesome full-length debut.

It's pretty cool to be able to go back and hear one of your favorite bands as they were when they were still finding their sound. On this album, you can hear their experimentation with various kinds of rock; heavy, raw metal and such. And you can also hear where they found what works for them, and developed it. Thayil's heavy, raw but sonically pleasing guitar grooves that were characteristic of the band are present here, as are (less often than later on) Cornell's emotion-racked shrieks. My personal favorite is the utterly explosive vibe of Incessant Mace.

There are some missteps, but those are taste-directed; I don't really like the abstract 665 and 667 interludes and the psychopathic Circle of Power. Still, it's very worth a listen.