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Soundgarden Reissue Career-Launching ‘Screaming Life’/’Fopp’ EP Twofer

Soundgarden 'Screaming Life/Fopp EP' Reissue Sub Pop

Soundgarden‘s hard-to-find first record will soon be a lot easier to own. Sub Pop is reissuing 1987’s six-song Screaming Life EP on November 26. The digital and double-vinyl release will also contain the alternative-rock heavyweights’ four-song 1988 Fopp EP, plus “Sub Pop Rock City,” the band’s track for 1988’s Sub Pop 200 compilation.

This early material from the grunge icons has never before received a digital release. The vinyl editions will be the first for these tracks since a late-’90s Screaming Life repressing that has long since sold out. Screaming Life producer Jack Endino, who remastered all the tracks for the reissues, recalls the original recording session in a statement:

Ah, Screaming Life, Soundgarden’s debut, and one of the first real records I made for anyone outside my own band, I already knew Soundgarden pretty well, since they and Skin Yard had shared the stage many times in Seattle’s tiny club scene circa 1985-1986. Soon after opening Reciprocal Recording in July 1986, there I was with Soundgarden, trying to make the most of our eight tracks. Somehow, we found room for all of Matt Cameron’s “bonus tubs,” Hiro’s primordial Fender bass, and a whopping four tracks to share between Kim Thayil’s mad guitar psychedelia and Chris Cornell’s still-expanding voice. “Nothing to Say” was the song that made us all look at each other and go, “uh, holy crap, how did we do this?”

Check out a new video for Screaming Life‘s slow-burning “Nothing to Say” above. The Seattle titans more recently shared a space-case video for “Halfway There,” from last year’s King Animal. They just completed their tour for the album, and frontman Chris Cornell told GMI Rock (via Blabbermouth) that “there’s nothing stopping us from continuing to make records.”

Soundgarden’s Screaming Life/Fopp Reissue Track List:

1. “Hunted Down”
2. “Entering”
3. “Tears to Forget”
4. “Nothing to Say”
5. “Little Joe”
6. “Hand of God”
7. “Sub Pop Rock City”
8. “Fopp”
9. “Fopp (Fucked Up Heavy Dub Mix)”
10. “Kingdom of Come”
11. “Swallow My Pride”