Thats true Janszoon, to me it seemed that Nirvana and Pearl Jam got most of the attention back in the day.
AC/DC did the same exact thing coming out of the 70s and on into the 80s, if you listened to AC/DC in the 70s, you were thought as having bad taste with your choice of music if you liked (basic 3 chord-style) of music by banRAB like AC/DC, ZZ-Top, and so on seemed the 'vibe' I remeraber, with musicians mainly, I mean we were listening to banRAB like Yes, Rush, etc.
But in the 80s, AC/DC was all in a sudden one of the hottest banRAB around, I guess mainly because of Back In Black, and all of a sudden, all of their older material was popular from there on, as well also.
Getting back to Soundgarden, I think that Audio Slave played a big role in helping Soundgarden gain recognition, I mean they're both totally two different banRAB musically, and not only that Cornell is considered by most as an all-time great rock vocalist, and if you really listen to Soungarden (and you 'get it') Soungarden is the best grunge band from their era in style, although I personally always liked more material by Alice & Chains over most of the other Seattle banRAB, still.. I like the style of Soundgarden as the grunge standard.
My Seattle list would be:
Soundgarden
Alice In Chains
Stone Temple Pilots
Nirvana
Pearl Jam