Soundgarden have entered the next stage of work on their long-awaited final studio album featuring recordings from late vocalist/guitarist Chris Cornell.
The surviving members of the legendary grunge band have spent the past year revisiting and expanding upon material Cornell left behind, with the goal of completing the album he was working toward before his passing in 2017.
Producer Terry Date (Deftones, Pantera), who previously worked with Soundgarden on the albums ‘Louder Than Love’ and ‘Badmotorfinger’, was brought in to help shape the recordings. The project has now moved into the mixing phase with Joe Barresi (Tool, Avenged Sevenfold) handling the mix for the album’s eight completed tracks.
The completion of the record was delayed for years following Cornell’s death, as well as a legal dispute between the band and Cornell’s widow over the unreleased material. During those proceedings, several song titles connected to the album surfaced, including:
- “Road Less Traveled” (Chris Cornell/Matt Cameron)
- “Orphans” (Chris Cornell/Matt Cameron)
- “At Ophians Door” (Chris Cornell/Matt Cameron)
- “Cancer” (Chris Cornell)
- “Ahead Of The Dog” (Chris Cornell/Kim Thayil)
- “Merrmas” (Chris Cornell/Ben Shepherd)
- “Stone Age Mind” (Chris Cornell)
Speaking recently on Dean Delray’s ‘Let There Be Talk’ podcast, drummer/vocalist Matt Cameron confirmed that the upcoming release will feature eight songs with vocals recorded by Chris Cornell. He also discussed how the material came together, explaining:
“We’d been sending demos back and forth since, like, 2013, ’14, something like that. I would send Chris some stuff. He would rearrange it, make a song out of it… I sent him three tracks, and then he would sing on top of the instrumentals that I’d written and rearrange them and everything.”
Cameron explained that the band also worked together in the studio prior to Cornell’s death, recording rehearsals and developing additional material that has now become part of the upcoming album.
“We are using some of the live rehearsal stuff, like some of the guitar stuff that Chris played guitar on, and then we’re using the vocals from these demos that he put together, with the music that we had written together. And, yeah, just kind of building on top of that.”
Regarding the scope of the album, Cameron confirmed that the band is working with all available vocal performances from Cornell.
“Eight songs. I think that that’s pretty much all there is with vocals. We had some instrumentals left over that Kim wants work on. So maybe we’ll do some new stuff together, which would be fine by me.”
A release date has not yet been announced, with Cameron noting that the band is focused on completing the mixing process before determining the next steps.
“We’re just gonna try to get this thing mixed, get it over the finish line, and then hopefully we’ll have a better idea what’s gonna come next. We’re just taking it one step at a time ’cause it’s been kind of a long process just to get to here.”
Cameron also addressed the emotional weight of finishing a Soundgarden record without Cornell while emphasizing that the material still feels like a true continuation of the band.
“And it sounds like Soundgarden. It’s just like we’re working on a Soundgarden album. We are.”
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