Soundgarden Says They’re ‘Pretty Close’ To Completing Final Album With Chris Cornell

The surviving members of Soundgarden have offered a promising and emotional update regarding their long-awaited final studio album, confirming that the project featuring the late Chris Cornell‘s vocals is nearing completion.

In a new interview with Allison Hagendorf, the trio of Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, and Ben Shepherd discussed the heavy process of revisiting the unreleased recordings made prior to Cornell‘s death in 2017. To shepherd these final tracks to the finish line, the band has reunited with producer Terry Date, the architect behind their seminal grunge classics Louder Than Love (1989) and Badmotorfinger (1991).

Guitarist Kim Thayil explained that Date was the obvious choice for the project, specifically because of his “hands-off” sonic philosophy.

“That’s one of the cool things about Terry, is he never imposed his production style or sound on any bands. He would learn from the bands,” Thayil told Hagendorf. “There are a lot of producers out there who have a particular style — for instance, you think about Phil Spector and the ‘wall of sound’. It’s, like, okay, well, that’s his thing… but with the way bands are post-1977, they have a sense of what they’re writing and what they wanna sound like, and the producers should simply facilitate that.”

Thayil added that Date‘s lack of a “signature” sound is his greatest strength: “It is him helping the band be the band.”

While the album serves as a tribute to the band’s legacy, drummer Matt Cameron hinted that fans should expect sonic evolution rather than a pure retread of the past. He admitted that hearing the new direction was an intense experience.

“There’s very familiar elements in some of this new music, but, yeah, there was a couple songs that felt like it was kind of a new chapter or it could have been a new chapter,” Cameron said. “So it’s really exciting to hear that. It’s bittersweet, of course.”

Cameron confirmed that the recording process is in its final stages. “We’re pretty close [to finishing it],” he noted, adding, “It’s fun for us to be working on it. And sometimes listening to it, it’s overpowering.”

For bassist Ben Shepherd, the magnitude of the material didn’t truly hit him until he stepped away from the recording console. He recalled a specific moment of realization while taking a break with assistant engineer Nate and producer Date.

“I was going to get coffee down the hall from the control room, and Nate and Terry were playing it back,” Shepherd recalled. “It was, like, ‘Holy hell. That’s Soundgarden. It’s so cool to hear it again.'”

Thayil echoed that sentiment, describing the transformation of the demos into full-fledged tracks as a moment of clarity: “It’s almost like you can pinpoint before and after. It’s, like, ‘Now it’s Soundgarden.'”