Per Chris Cornell's Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as the new Web site soundgardenworld.com, Soundgarden is reuniting after a 12-year break. following a pretty messy break-up for the band . I guess Cornell has realized that he can't have a career as a rock singer if he wants to do retarded things like make records with Timbaland. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Cornell's voice, which got rocky near the end of Soundgarden and was downright awful on Audioslave's first album, has been as great as it ever was now that he's been sober for quite some time (quitting whiskey and cigarettes does that for you, I suppose), though his creative output in the last few years has been ... marginal. I personally enjoyed Carry On, but Scream was an unmitigated disaster. Thoughts on one of the biggest grunge bands in history reuniting?
I liked Soundgarden (and grunge in general) just fine when I was an angry 19 year old and the world sucked, but truthfully, I can't stand listening to that music at all these days. I find myself listening to classic rock (I'm really into the Allman Brother Band right now) or hair metal as a guilty pleasure, but very little stuff produced after 1990 gets any play time on my iPod to be honest.
This is fantastic news, Soundgarden are one of my favourite bands of all time. It's been quite a good few years, with the reformation of Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains and Faith No More amongst quite a few more, many of my favourite bands from the 90s are back together and recording again. Next year should be a good year for big rock releases. STP's new LP lands in the spring, AICs amazing new album is already out, and I have little doubt that Soundgarden and FNM will go beyond a reformation tour and will actually make a new record.
Frankly the only grunge I can really stand anymore is Alice in Chains's 2nd album, Dirt. Not very enthusiastic about Soundgarden getting back together. And?
Soundgarden and AIC are both just metal/hard rock bands as far as I am concerned. I agree with T'Baio that the grunge title really just doesn't fit very much of their work at all. I find it quite odd that people refer to AIC, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam as the big 4 of grunge, none of those bands sound even remotely like each other.
Grunge is a big category, and has to do with more than just the way the music sounded. It was an entire scene.
Exactly. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden are metal bands. Hell, Soundgarden almost devolved into pop-rock on the last record or two. Pearl Jam is purely just a straight ahead rock and roll band. Nirvana's basically just punk. Grunge was originally used to describe bands like Mudhoney and Green River and Tad, by Mark Arm, and few of the popular bands that got stuck with the label sounded remotely like "grunge."
Eh, that scene had died and been warped into a mass marketable fashion phenomenon by the time any of those bands achieved any real popularity.
It's not that big, some bands just got tossed in there since they released their debut album from 1990-1993 and weren't "metal" or "pop" so they just got shoehorned in there. Grunge is Nirvana Pearl Jam Alice In Chains Melvins Mudhoney Green River Screaming Trees Soundgarden Stone Temple Pilots STP barely belong in that grouping. And Soundgarden was always more Hard Rock than Grunge IMO Then you get bands like Foo Fighters, who are an awesome "Rock" band getting unfairly called "post-grunge" making Dave Grohl sad.
@ pingfah: I don't know about that. I lived in the Puget Sound area (general area of Seattle, WA where Grunge began) for a time in the early and mid 90's, and the scene seemed alive and well.
^ Perhps, but those "grunge" bands we are talking about here were off touring the world, selling squillions of albums and developing their sound into something entirely different to the music we were hearing in the very late 80s and early 90s.
I really only got into Soundgarden with their last two albums before the break-up, and I always kind of thought of the bands they were associated with, they were the most groove heavy (I'm thinking of tracks like "Let Me Drown," "Mailman," "Spoonman," and "Pretty Noose" in particular). Superunknown was one of my favorite albums of the '90s...
I just saw STP live a month ago, and this news makes me happy and hopeful I might get to see Soundgarden in the flesh at some point. In Cornell's defence he essentially wrote that album on a weekend hanging out with Timbaland as a "why the hell not", it wasn't meant to be representative of the direction of his career. And yeah I was not a fan of that record either, I liked maybe one song.
I was too stunned to have any reaction other than "!!!!!!!!" when I first caught this on Facebook. Now I'm cautiosly very optimistic. I hope the other dudes can get some sense into CC and get him rocking like he should be again. If they don't come to Australia I will cry for days!
Grunge is a catchall for bands in the late 80s/early 90s Seattle underground music scene. It's not really a style, but I think there is a good reason to include these bands together. STP is really pushing it, though, imo. Anyway, I pretty much thought this was a matter of time. I'll be cautiously optimistic, but that's about it (then again, I felt the same way about Alice in Chains and their album isn't half bad).
^ I think it became a catchall after the fact. But anyway, the main point is that Soundgarden reforming is the most awesome musical news of the decade. So far It might become a disaster, but IMO none of the other big reformations have been. I wonder what this will mean for Pearl Jam now Cameron is otherwise occupied, he was the best thing to happen to that band for a long time. I think the new AIC album is a brilliant album personally, really beautiful.
I thought STP was the most awesome, but I saw them in one of their first concerts back and it was clear they had a few bugs to work out. I feel that one always runs the risk of Weiland being Weiland and they break up. That's why I'm being cautiously optimistic, but still waiting. I feel Soundgarden might be the same way. Alice in Chains is a bit different. They didn't really break up over creative/personality differences. I had to be sold on William Duvall, but that was it.
Hasn't Weiland still been drinking, though, ever since he got back with STP? I don't expect that reunion to last very long ... probably just to the point that Weiland can lay down his vocals on the new album, and then he'll pass out on stage on the first leg of the tour. I love what he's done and what he can do as a musician -- I just hate that he refuses to clean up his act.
^ Same here, I just hope they get the album out and the legal wranglings with Atlantic don't scupper it. I expect it to be a great album and as I understand it, it is basically done already. He is a troubled man though, to be sure. Very true, I flew from the UK to Detroit to see STP on the first comeback tour and I was really pooing myself that Weiland just wouldn't turn up or would be blasted out of his mind. As it happens he did turn up, and it was an amazing gig with a virtually flawless performance. Although I saw them on the SLDD tour at Brixton Academy in London and they played a lot more off-album stuff, on balance the first gig was the better but both were fantastic. I heard some horror stories abut a few gigs on the comeback tour though. Duvall is very good I think, a very good fit indeed, and I think AIC handled the whole thing with a lot of dignity and a very respectful approach. I just wish they would unleash Duvall as a proper frontman instead of making him share the spotlight with Jerry Cantrell so much.