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Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron has offered an update on the band’s final album featuring posthumous vocals from the late Chris Cornell.
Speaking with Billboard, the drummer revealed that Soundgarden are “over halfway done” with the long-gestating project — a collection of eight songs that the band began working on prior to Cornell’s death in May of 2017. Cameron noted that guitarist Kim Thayil is currently perfecting his parts on the recordings, and while there’s still no definite timetable for a release date, things are moving ahead.
“There’s not a set release date or anything as of yet,” Cameron said. “There were a couple schools of thought, like, ‘Hey, let’s put out a single.’ I think eventually we decided we want to make sure the whole thing is completed before we start releasing singles. I’m excited for people to hear it.”
He continued, “We’re definitely over halfway done with it. Kim is in the process of finishing his guitar parts; he wants to make sure they get exactly the way he wants them.”
Cameron said that working on the songs — the final Soundgarden recordings with Cornell — has had its “extreme highs and extreme lows” emotionally.
“Hearing [Cornell’s] voice on these powerful hard rock songs is the most empowering thing in the world for me,” Cameron continued. “Then I listen to his voice soloed up when I’m working on stuff, or if Kim or [bassist] Ben [Shepherd] is working on something, and it all comes back to the fact that he’s not with us and he left us in a way that has so many questions. It’s been gut-wrenching but at the same time very empowering.”
In April 2023, it was announced that Soundgarden’s final recordings would see the light of day after the band reconciled its long-running legal dispute with Chris Cornell’s widow Vicky. Thayil later expressed his optimism about the album’s eventual release this past May in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“Our objective and goal was always to complete that,” he said of the album. “I probably have OCD enough to not want to leave something unfinished or incomplete like that, so I think the more we can attend to our body of work and our catalog…I think everyone in the band feels that way. I don’t just to attend to my work, but the collective work, and in this case specifically, the work of Chris.”
Thayil added, “I have pride for what I did and I want to see that come out. It doesn’t exist in the vacuum. It exists as a collaboration with Matt and Ben and Chris, but it takes on an entirely different weight when you think about what it is you’re honoring, and the work that you’re paying tribute to. It is us collectively. We want to do it proud. And that part of us is certainly one of the most intimate components of what Soundgarden has been since 1984.”
Meanwhile, the Seattle grunge legends are set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on November 8th, with a ceremony set to take place in Los Angeles and stream live on Disney+.
English (US) · 