Product Review
Subtitled "Surviving the Northwest rock explosion," the film is a wry documentary about the rise and fall of Seattle as grunge central. The mostly-live original soundtrack covers every major (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden), mid-size (Posies, Mudhoney), and shouldabeen (Fastbacks, Flop, Supersuckers) act imaginable. Think of it as an instant collection of rare Sub Pop, Frontier and C-Z singles. --Jeff Bateman

Hype! was a great documentary chronicling the ups and downs of the Seattle grunge scene. This soundtrack has a really interesting selection of songs, not only in that there are several bands that wouldn't be obvious choices for a grunge compilation, but also that the songs they chose for the obvious ones are non-obvious songs (ie, the Nirvana pick is "Negative Creep"). It seems to be "missing" quite a bit though. Where are Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Dickless, and Candlebox? Where's the side project stuff like Temple of the Dog, Mad Season, and Brad? Where's all the rest of the interesting stuff the film delved into, like Coffin Break, Hammerbox, Zipgun, and Crackerbash (which had a prominent song in the movie, I thought this was a soundtrack?)? I guess they couldn't cover *everything*, though it would've been nice for this to be a double album with all the aforementioned bands represented. Despite that disappointment it's really hard to complain about this CD, as it contains 22 tracks of pure greatness, including several rarities, and, for everyone except the most expert of grunge connoisseurs, several bands that you otherwise wouldn't bother to check out. The liner notes are pretty weak, but that's just me nitpicking. The fact is, this is 22 tracks of grunge, only a few of which would plausibly be in anyone's collection, none of which are hit singles or on hit albums, and all of which are excellent. Get it. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)