The Many Children of 'King Animal'

Soundgarden returned last fall with their first album in over 15 years – King Animal – which had fans worried if their sound would be able to age as well as Kim Thayil's beard.  Though after revealing the album art, many fans asked themselves, "what the fuck am I looking at?"  – and all concerns about Soundgarden's state were thrown in the pile of unsold copies of Chris Cornell's Timbaland-produced Scream.

Starting with Badmotorfinger (has anyone ever had a goodmotorfinger?), Soundgarden has always had a tradition of creating what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at (WTFAILA) album covers.

With their 1991 release, fans didn't know if they were looking at a cryptic Masonic piece of art, or a failed attempt at spin-art done by a kid who got cotton candy stuck in the machine at the King County Fair.  They followed it up with their most prominent record, Superunknown (English, motherfuckers, do you speak it?) featuring a screaming Uruk-hai over a Rorcsach test image.

Going from ethnically-controversial lyrics like "All my friends are Indians/All my friends are brown and red" to the maturity level of a 14-year-old boy who just got grounded but lucky for him discovered his dad's Playboy collection with lyrics such as "Hard headed fuck you all," fans were taken aback when they saw Down On The Upside was an I-realize-what-I'm-looking-at (IRWILA) cover.

Instead, the only question that was raised was, "Kim, why are you the only one sitting down?"  And I know you're all asking yourselves, "how do you know it's Kim?"  But let's be honest.  We all know it's Kim.  

With the reveal of King Animal's cover art, fans once again began to question this WTFAILA cover.  We are uncertain as to whether we should look too much into it, or just regard it as another weird cover for a band dedicated to being weird and writing songs about dogs shitting on grass.  We again begin to question, "is this a Soundgarden cover, or is it a newly discovered Salvador Dali painting? And is that a cow skull with ram horns connected to it?  A 'ramcow'?  Will looking at this cover invoke some deep feeling or desire to become a vegetarian?"  

After the overwhelmingly positive response to Soundgarden's revival and King Animal's album art, they said to themselves, "this cover is too good to use only once – let's use it again" thus giving birth to their Record Store Day release King Animal Demos.

Here we see a similar Freudian bone sculpture under the bubblegum pink-saturated sky.  Now we ask ourselves, "is this the same sculpture as before and if so, how did it get to the top of a mountain?  Why would someone move it in the first place?  What happened to just plain, simple spin-art designs?"  

But Soundgarden couldn't stop there – oh no, this shit is just too damn good, "we have to use this cover one more time," they said, again pushing out a new King Animal fetus – King Animal Plus.

The 'Plus' denoting super, enhanced, deluxe – but you and I know it to be "weird fucking cow skull with ram antlers and – wait, are those flowers too!?  And who moved it back to its original position from on top of that mountain?  Why is there someone who has the strength and time to move something like that?"  

Soundgarden's return not only denotes their ability to continue to perform great music, but also their ability to totally fuck with your mind by showing crazy, psychologically-troubling, sexuality-questioning (What?  Who said anything about that?) album covers.  And don't be looking for any rationale because it'll be harder to find than the B-Sides to Scream.