The Soundgarden song that parodies heavy metal
Soundgarden had a complicated relationship with heavy metal. When they burst onto the scene with the 1988 album Ultramega OK, the genre appeared to have an ever-decreasing relevance. Toward the end of the ’80s, a new sound was being ushered in, and it was fuzzier than metal but carried the same level of angst. Soundgarden, alongside the likes of Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Smashing Pumpkins, ushered in the sound of grunge with one sweeping and devastating move.
But, in Soundgarden’s case, at least, the media didn’t adopt the grunge tag so willingly. Instead of looking forward, the music press had a tendency to look backwards, pronouncing Soundgarden as ‘the new Led Zeppelin‘ in a bizarre oversight. Chris Cornell was often pipped as the unique incarnation of Robert Plant, being that he was a long-haired, lithe frontman with a voice that could enthral entire stadiums.
Still, a number of grunge bands didn’t take kindly to the constant comparison to their metal counterparts – which goes some way to explaining the concept of Soundgarden’s song ‘665’. The track arrived as a very thinly-veiled jab at metal’s preoccupation with satanic imagery.
Written by bass player Hiro Yamamoto, the song’s title, one number away from that of the devil, wasn’t the only jab at metal. When played in reverse, Cornell can be heard declaring: “I need you, Santa baby”.
This was seemingly in response to the constant Zeppelin comparisons because on their hit ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the band were said to use backmasking to include the message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan / The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan / He will give those with him 666 / There was a little tool-shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan”.
The Soundgarden track goes on to parody the heavy metal hits that supposedly include hidden (or not-so-hidden) satanic messages. Soundgarden said, many times before, that the association between black magic and rock music is nothing short of ridiculous.
Although Soundgarden were typically more foreboding and raw in their approach, ‘665’ was a good example of their tongue-in-cheek humour. Over the years, the band grew accustomed to joking off comparisons to heavy metal bands, with Cornell once saying: “It could be worse, they could’ve compared me to Jim Morrison.”
Still, the situation did start to grate, hence the creation of ‘665’. As Cornell himself pointed out, the similarities between him and Plant were actually quite scarce. But maybe it took a mock satanic song to highlight that.
“All the Led Zep comparisons have become a thorn in the band’s side,” he once admitted. “I mean, Led Zeppelin was never a favourite band of anyone in the group and, to tell the truth, I don’t really hear much Led Zeppelin in us, except that I sometimes sing in a loud falsetto. We don’t write songs about wizards, swords, or any of that dungeons and dragons crap”.
