The
recently announced Soundgarden reunion is the perfect/only opportunity I need to remind people that the band were
much, much better than you probably remember – unless, that is, you remember them as
‘Black Sabbath Worshiping Titans Of Awesome’ in which case carry on as you were.
As our brave editor Marcus
mentioned, the band may well have come to fore during the Seattle grunge hostile take-over but these days they sound less like a contemporaries of the Mudhoneys and the Nirvanas of the world and much more like a godhead metal band. As
Four Of July (from their
Superunknown album)
drones away on my playlist, they come off as heavy but also playful and quasi-ironic, a missing link perhaps between the obtuse punk metal The Melvins and Boris and the stadium-sized stoner metal of Queens Of The Stone Age and Mastodon.
Of course, what has not served the memory well is their singer Chris Cornell. When people think of Cornell, I feel they tend to fixate on these crimes:
1. The unintentional homoeroticism of his visual presentation throughout the band’s early '90s
Badmotorfinger era.
2. Yes, Audioslave: On paper Audioslave was Rage Against The Machine sans political content plus the singer from Soundgarden oft-remembered for #1. Even less enticing on record. Sorry back-haters.
3. His bad solo albums. I’m going to have to take your word for it. I didn’t investigate Cornell’s solo work for the same reason I don’t listen to post-band efforts from Ozzie Osbourne or Robert Plant or John Garcia.
But…this is not the way to go people. You need to put Cornell into a different place in your heart. He is the
LEAD SINGER of a metal band. He’s supposed to be a bit of a cartoon. To help you picture him correctly (and thus concentrate on the dissonant riffs lurking beneath the polish and pomp), I have assembled the following guide to listening.
Step One: Go directly to their 1991 single Rusty Cage. You can do so below. Focus your mind on the riff. It sounds a bit like a Tommi Iommi riff but different yes? That’s a good thing.
Step Two: Play the riff. Do it. (Guitar/ability optional)
Step Three: Whilst doing Steps One and Two, ignore the fact that Cornell is dressed a little the Prince of Persia. Instead imagine a visual representation of his lyrics he sings in the second verse: "I’ll take the river down to still water/And ride a pack of dogs." It should approximate something like:
Step Four: At 2:50 min, the song will come to an abrupt standstill and then start into a much slower dirge. Continue with Step Two but now bang your head – slowly – in time with the music with you mouth slightly open.
Step Five: On the final note of the song, hold your fists aloft and shake them.
This will be easier with practice and repeated listening. Of course, being a seventeen year old living in sub-regional Queensland during the mid-nineties also helps.