CHART BUSTERS : HEADING STRAIGHT BACK TO NO. 1 SPOT, SOUNDGARDEN GOES FOR HARDER SOUND ON ANGST-RICH `DOWN ON THE UPSIDE'.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Music Writer

Innovator of the Seattle sound, Soundgarden has revamped the heavy-metal handbook of the '70s and returned to its pile-driving roots on ``Down on the Upside,'' the band's follow-up to 1994's multimillion-selling ``Superunknown.''

The just-released disc is expected to top the album charts next week, shortly before the quartet heads out on this summer's Lollapalooza tour with Metallica, Screaming Trees and the Ramones.

``When I was younger, me and my friends saw certain bands as suspect and forced upon the public,'' says Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil. ``They seemed constructed by some combination of factory, marketplace and sinister outside force. It was difficult to believe in them. They seemed like shallow entertainers rather than artists worthy of being taken seriously. Soundgarden has always kept that in mind as a warning.''

Thayil's guarantee of quality didn't stop the band from retooling the sometimes Beatles-like sound that helped ``Superunknown'' win two Grammy Awards and catapulted the quartet into the realm of the country's top rock bands.

``Down on the Upside'' (A&M) boasts material that's more dense and harder-hitting than the previous effort. The first single, the hard-edged ``Pretty Noose,'' however, has been embraced by radio stations of various formats.

At Burbank's modern-rock radio KROQ-FM (106.7), music director Lisa Worden said the single isn't drawing heavy requests from listeners, but that's typical of the kind of straightforward record it is.

``The fact that it's not a huge phone record isn't unusual,'' she said. ``Usually, the weirder, quirkier stuff gets the biggest number of requests.''

Worden said that while Soundgarden's new material was ``very hard and very different'' from ``Superunknown,'' the current album would be a huge seller.

Lyrically, ``Down on the Upside'' - self-produced by Thayil, lead singer and guitarist Chris Cornell, bassist Ben Shepherd and drummer Matt Cameron - breaks little new ground. Angst, alienation and loneliness are the big three themes, underscored by a mountain of pummeling '70s-style heavy-metal guitars, mandolins and bone-crunching drums and bass. Cornell puts it all across in a high-pitched, angry shriek.

``We think the album sounds a bit more spontaneous and immediate than the last one,'' the 35-year-old Thayil said. ``The drums are really the foundation for the whole recording and how the rest of the instruments fit together.

``We sound like a rock band, and I think we avoided some of the production techniques that make an album sound dated two years down the line. ... Most bands work quickly in the studio and some bands utilize the full range of possibilities the studio offers. We tried to avoid those traps.''

Before Nirvana broke down the doors for Seattle alternative rock, quickly followed by Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, Soundgarden had earned the largest following of any Pacific Northwest band by appealing to riff-happy metal fans as well as post-punk kids.

The band's biggest success came with its fifth album, ``Superunknown,'' which soared to No. 1 and sold more than 6 million copies, fueled by such expertly crafted radio-friendly singles and videos as ``Black Hole Sun,'' ``Fell on Black Days'' and ``Spoonman.''

Soundgarden, the first band to repeat as a Lollapalooza headliner (the group initially appeared on the 1992 bill), was also one of the first outfits to become aligned with the Seattle grunge scene. In its earliest days 12 years ago, the quartet laid down the grunge blueprint by blending gloomy metal riffs, ironic lyrics and hints of psychedelia and punk.

The group - named after a noisy pipe sculpture in a Seattle park - was among the first acts to sign with that city's terminally hip Sub-Pop label, Nirvana's first home. The band is also considered the first grunge band to make the leap from indie label to the majors with integrity intact.

``We'd been gradually growing in terms of audience size and number of live performances,'' Thayil said. ``To have a No. 1 album was the culmination of this house of cards we're building.''

If insiders are right, Soundgarden will soon be celebrating another chart-topping album. According to John Book, manager of the Tower Records branch in Woodland Hills, ``Down on the Upside'' was easily the top mover of the week and would debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 albums list next Wednesday.

``Sales are going great,'' he said, adding that buyers ranged in age from people in their teens to their 30s.

Strong sales started at opening time Tuesday, when ``Down on the Upside'' hit the racks. The fact that the band played two songs on ``Saturday Night Live'' last weekend was added exposure.

``When we record a song or listen to a demo, we might jokingly refer to a particular track as `the hit,' '' Thayil said. ``Sometimes, that song even becomes a hit. But we don't premeditate anything like that. If we worried about marketing and distribution and placing hits, we'd be a record company instead of a band.''

Thayil said that while Soundgarden was looking forward to playing the Lollapalooza main stage with the Screaming Trees and Metallica, he's already tired of being hit with questions about the validity of a supposedly cutting-edge alternative-rock festival being headlined by mainstream metal merchants like Metallica. Some wags, in fact, have taken to calling the 1996 Lollapalooza tour - which hits Los Angeles in early August - Monsters of Rock Revisited.

``What's always been attractive about Lollapalooza is the kind of bills they come up with,'' Thayil said. ``It's silly for people to worry about labels for music. There's hardly any difference between anything that might be considered alternative and what Metallica does, except for the fact that the members of Metallica play their instruments well.''

Thayil said he is increasingly sensitive to a host of modern-rock cliches that have sprung up in the wake of Nirvana's success.

``Along with the ever-present '80s drum sound, there's this arrangement formula where the bass carries the melody and the guitar goes from clean to distorted, just like on `Smells Like Teen Spirit,' '' he explained. ``Although Nirvana was innovative and imaginative enough not to turn that into a formula for every single song, a lot of the top-40 alternative hits have carried that formula on.''

As more and more fellow musicians from the once tightly knit Seattle music scene score worldwide success, Thayil finds he socializes with hometown friends on the road rather than anywhere else.

``It was more of a social scene years ago,'' the guitarist said. ``Now, bands might have come and gone or might be touring all the time. There was a time when we'd all be around town at the same time. Today, we're more likely to run into each other on the other side of the world.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Soundgarden retools its music,and the result is another monster hit.

(2) Soundgarden's newest album, ``Down on the Upside,'' is more ``spontaneous and immediate'' than the multiplatinum ``Superunknown,'' says guitarist Kim Thayil, third from left.