Soundgarden Breaks Sixteen Years of Silence with November Album Release
Attention: grunge fans. Soundgarden is back. The band reunited in 2010 after a 13 year hiatus, and they have finally confirmed that a new album of new material – their first in 16 years – will be released this fall.
Guitarist Kim Thayil confirmed to Rolling Stone that the album will be released November 12 in the U.K. and the following day in the U.S.
“It establishes that we still rock, we’re still heavy and we’re still a little weird,” Thayil told the magazine. He also confirmed that “Blood on the Valley Floor” and “A Thousand Days Before” are the titles of two tracks on the album, though he did not reveal the title of the album. He described the latter song as “a little Indian thing and some chicken-pickin’. We call it ‘country and eastern.’” See what he did there?
Frontman Chris Cornell spoke about new material earlier this year with NME, saying that the group would “pick up where they left off” after their most recent album, 1996’s Down on the Upside.
“We have an album coming out in the fall,” he told the magazine. “It’s kind of hard to describe, it’s sort of picking up where we left off. There’s a lot of different feels on the album. We’re a band where every single member contributes music so that makes it very diverse. It’s a very rich album with a lot of different moods to it.”
Since the original break up of the band, all members took on different musical projects, with the most high profile being Cornell’s four solo albums. In regards to the recent albums in his solo discography, it’s pretty safe to say that Soundgarden fans will be glad to hear that “we still rock, we’re still heavy,” because those words wouldn’t really describe the solo efforts in any way.
Never one to keep his mouth shut, Smashing Pumpkins frontman (and sole remaining member) Billy Corgan of course had some words about Soundgarden’s return.
“When Soundgarden came back and they just played their old songs, great,” he told PhilStar.com. “I was a fan of Soundgarden, but call it for what it is. They’re just out there to have one more round at the till; same with Pavement and these other bands.”
Fortunately, Corgan backs up his statements by continuously releasing such innovative and cutting edge music with the Pumpkins (in case it’s not readily apparent, sarcasm is intended here).
