Superunknown was a critical and commercial success and became the band's breakthrough album. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 310,000 copies in its opening week and reached high positions on charts worldwide. Five singles were released from the album: "The Day I Tried to Live", "My Wave", "Fell on Black Days", "Spoonman", and "Black Hole Sun", the latter two of which won Grammy Awards and helped Soundgarden reach mainstream popularity. In 1995, the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. The album has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA in the United States, has sold 9 million copies worldwide and remains Soundgarden's most successful album.
Soundgarden began work on the album about two months after finishing its stint on the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. The individual band members would work on material on their own and then bring in demos to which the other members of the band would contribute. Frontman Chris Cornell said that the band members allowed each other more freedom than on past records. Thayil observed that even though the band spent as much time writing and arranging as it had on previous albums, it spent a lot more time working on recording the songs. After two albums with producer Terry Date, the band decided to seek another collaborator, as guitarist Kim Thayil said, "We just thought we'd go for a change." Eventually they settled on producer Michael Beinhorn, who "didn't have his own trademark sound which he was trying to tack on to Soundgarden" and had ideas the band approved.
The album's recording sessions took place from July 1993 to September 1993 at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington, as according to Cornell "there was never a decent studio in Seattle and now there's one with a Neve console, so it seemed obvious to use it". Bad Animals' resident engineer Adam Kasper, who went on to produce Soundgarden's following albums, assisted Beinhorn on the recording process. Soundgarden took the approach of recording one song at a time. The drum and bass parts were recorded first for each song, and then Cornell and Thayil would lay down their parts over top. Cornell said that getting to know Beinhorn contributed to the length of time Soundgarden spent working on the album. The band spent time experimenting with different drum and guitar sounds, as well as utilizing techniques such as layering, resulting in an expansive production sound.[8] Cornell said, "Michael Beinhorn was so into sounds. He was so, almost, anal about it, that it took the piss out of us a lot of the time ... By the time you get the sounds that you want to record the song, you're sick and tired of playing it." Beinhorn tried to add many of his preferred musicians to mold the band's sound, in what Billboard described as "weaning the band from brute force, giving it the impetus to invest in a more subtle power". For instance, prior to recording the vocals of "Black Hole Sun", Beinhorn made Cornell listen to Frank Sinatra.
Superunknown lasts for 15 songs clocking on approximately 70 minutes because according to Cornell, "we didn't really want to argue over what should be cut". Soundgarden took a break in the middle of recording to open for Neil Young on a ten-day tour of the United States. The band then brought in Brendan O'Brien to mix the album, as Beinhorn felt the band needed "a fresh pair of ears"; O'Brien had come recommended by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. Thayil called the mixing process "very painless", and bassist Ben Shepherd said it was "the fastest part of the record".
The album's cover art (known as the 'Screaming Elf') is a distorted photograph of the band members, photographed by Kevin Westenberg, above a black and white upside-down burning forest. Concerning the artwork, Cornell said, "Superunknown relates to birth in a way ... Being born or even dying—getting flushed into something that you know nothing about. The hardest thing is to nail down a visual image to put on a title like that. The first thing we thought of was a forest in grey or black. Soundgarden has always been associated with images of flowers and lush colors and this was the opposite. It still seemed organic but it was very dark and cold ... I was into those stories as a kid where forests were full of evil and scary things as opposed to being happy gardens that you go camping in." In a 1994 Pulse! magazine interview, Cornell said that the inspiration for the album's title came from his misreading of a video entitled Superclown. He added, "I thought it was a cool title. I'd never heard it before, never saw it before, and it inspired me." The album also saw a limited release on 12" colored vinyl (blue, orange, and clear), as a double-LP in a gatefold sleeve. The album's title 'SUPERUNKNOWN' is sometimes displayed with the "UNKNOWN" as semi upside down and reversed lettering (stylized as "SUPER∩ИKИOWИ").
On May 25, 2017, photographer Kevin Westenberg revealed the full photo from the cover for the first time on his Instagram account.
Superunknown was Soundgarden's breakout album, earning the band international recognition. Upon its release in March 1994, Superunknown debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart, and eventually closed the year as the 13th best-selling album of 1994, with 2.5 million copies sold. The album Superunknown has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA in the United States, three times platinum in Canada, and gold in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Superunknown has sold around 9 million copies worldwide, with an estimated 3,794,000 in the US. The album spawned the EP Songs from the Superunknown and the CD-ROM Alive in the Superunknown, both released in 1995.
The 20th-anniversary reissue of "Superunknown" was made available in two deluxe versions. The Deluxe Edition was a 2-CD package featuring the remastered album along with disc two consisting of demos, rehearsals, B-sides and more. The Super Deluxe Edition was a 5-CD package featuring the remastered album, additional demos, rehearsals and B-sides and the fifth disc is the album mixed in Blu-ray Audio 5.1 Surround Sound. The Super Deluxe Edition was packaged in a hardbound book with a lenticular cover, liner notes by David Fricke and newly reimagined album artwork designed by Josh Graham. It also featured never-before-seen band photography by Kevin Westerberg. A 2-LP gatefold of the original 16 vinyl tracks remastered on 200-gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket was also made available. In addition, the Superunknown singles and associated b-sides with newly interpreted artwork sleeves by Josh Graham was reissued on Record Store Day, 19 April 2014, as a set of five limited-edition 10-inch vinyl records."
The band began touring in January 1994 in Oceania and Japan, areas where the record came out early. The band had never toured these regions before. This round of touring ended in February 1994, and then in March 1994 the band moved on to Europe. The band were to join a 20-date co-headline American tour with Nine Inch Nails in April/May, but had to cancel, but continued with a headlining theater tour on May 27, 1994. The opening acts were Tad and Eleven. In late 1994, after touring in support of Superunknown, doctors discovered that Cornell had severely strained his vocal cords. Soundgarden cancelled several more shows to avoid causing any permanent damage. Cornell said, "I think we kinda overdid it! We were playing five or six nights a week and my voice pretty much took a beating. Towards the end of the American tour I felt like I could still kinda sing, but I wasn't really giving the band a fair shake. You don't buy a ticket to see some guy croak for two hours! That seemed like kind of a rip off." The band made up the dates later in 1995
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