The focus on the Seattle grunge scene helped bring attention to Badmotorfinger, and the singles "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" found a major audience in rock radio and MTV.

The album received critical acclaim, citing the significant improvements over earlier releases and evolution in the band's sound.

[11] Steve Huey of AllMusic said the songwriting on the album "takes a quantum leap in focus and consistency", adding: "It's surprisingly cerebral and arty music for a band courting mainstream metal audiences, but it attacks with scientific precision.

"[22] Thayil compared listening to the album to "reading a novel [about] man's conflict with himself and society, or the government, or his family, or the economy, or anything.

"[18] Badmotorfinger was scheduled for release on September 24, 1991, but A&M Records pushed it back to October 8 due to "production problems.

"[39][1] Coming a month and a half after Pearl Jam's Ten and just weeks after Nirvana's Nevermind and Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik (both of which were released on September 24), it has been credited with helping to break alternative rock and grunge into the mainstream.

[6][45][46] The album included the singles "Jesus Christ Pose", "Outshined", and "Rusty Cage", which gained considerable airtime on alternative rock radio stations.

[48] Entertainment Weekly critic Gina Arnold commended Soundgarden for writing more engagingly than their contemporaries, "who seldom get beyond extolling booze, girls, and cars".

"[10] Writing for NME, Keith Cameron said that the band had found "a cool balance" between Cornell's "bluesy screams" and Thayil's "brutish riff powerplay" on Badmotorfinger, rendering the album more "stripped down, lithe and lethal" than Louder Than Love.

[35] Retrospectively, AllMusic staff-writer Steve Huey deemed Badmotorfinger "heavy, challenging hard rock full of intellectual sensibility and complex band interplay",[11] while Ann Powers of Blender commented that "Cornell strikes the perfect Jesus Christ pose on this sonic wallop".

[56] According to a document filed as part of a class action lawsuit Soundgarden and other artists brought against UMG as a result of the fire, the label made the band aware in May 2015 that the original half-inch master tape of Badmotorfinger had been destroyed and was unavailable for use on the remaster project.

[57] After this, Soundgarden took a slot opening for Skid Row in North America in February 1992 on that band's Slave to the Grind tour.

[16] Regarding the time spent opening for Guns N' Roses, Cornell said: "It wasn't a whole lot of fun going out in front of 40,000 people for 35 minutes every day.

[60] All lyrics are written by Chris Cornell, except "Somewhere" by Ben Shepherd and "Room a Thousand Years Wide" by Kim Thayil.Soundgarden Additional personnel Artwork Production