In a new interview with Allison Hagendorf, the surviving members of SOUNDGARDEN discussed the album they are working on featuring previously unreleased recordings they made with late frontman Chris Cornell before his 2017 death. Guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd are collaborating with producer Terry Date, who previously helmed SOUNDGARDEN‘s “Louder Than Love” (1989) and “Badmotorfinger” (1991) LPs. Kim said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “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. And one of the things he would assert when he took a job was, ‘I want this to be a co-production thing.’ And it’s, like, ‘Well, that fits just perfect with the kind of band we are.’ 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 producers had that kind of role in the ’60s and, to some degree, the ’70s, 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. And Terry‘s that guy. I mean, you listen to records he’s done, and it’s very different from certainly what he’s done with us. There isn’t a signature Terry Date thing. It is him helping the band be the band.”
Asked by Hagendorf about his previous comment that some SOUNDGARDEN fans might even be surprised to hear that the songwriting was going in a little bit of a different direction from the group’s previous efforts, Matt said: “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. So it’s really exciting to hear that. It’s bittersweet, of course.”
He continued: “But, yeah, I’m really excited for people to hear it, have our fans hear it. It’s fun for us to be working on it. And sometimes listening to it, it’s overpowering. But, yeah, I’m super proud of the music that we did put together. And we’re pretty close [to finishing it]. And, yeah, it is nice having Terry on board with us, for sure.”
Ben went on to say that when he first heard the demos, he didn’t realize how powerful they were until he started laying down his tracks.
“I was going to get coffee down the hall from the control room, and Nate and Terry were playing it back — Nate‘s our assistant engineer on it,” Ben recalled. “It was, like, ‘Holy hell. That SOUNDGARDEN. It’s so cool to hear it again.'”
Added Kim: “Yeah, it’s like we had these various demos, and you had a particular quality. And it was, like, ‘Okay, how do we flesh this out?’ And then we start doing it, and it’s, like, ‘This sounds different.’ It’s almost like you can pinpoint before and after. It’s, like, ‘Now it’s SOUNDGARDEN.'”
Earlier this month, SOUNDGARDEN joined the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame class of 2025 in the Performer category. The Seattle grunge legends were first nominated for the Rock Hall in 2020, and were on the ballot again in 2023 before finally being chosen for induction this year.
Thayil, Cameron, Cornell and Shepherd are being included in the induction, as is original bassist Hiro Yamamoto, who was with SOUNDGARDEN from 1984 to 1989 and played on the band’s first two EPs and first two albums.
Last month, Cameron told The Seattle Times about the status of the recordings made before Cornell‘s death: “It’s a massive emotional roller coaster. A lot of highs, a lot of lows. The highs are based on the fact that the music is seeing its light of day, it’s coming to life. Some of it feels like it could have been a new chapter in songwriting for the group, so that’s super bittersweet. But it’s been challenging to work on some of this music, soloing up Chris‘s vocals and hearing that beautiful voice come through the speakers all on its own.’
Referencing the years-long legal dispute with Vicky Cornell, the widow and personal representative of Chris‘s estate, over the release of the singer’s final recordings, Thayil added: “The delay in the process was damaging in some ways to the emotive nature of the experience. Certainly, it’s great that we’re doing it now. I’m wondering — because you can’t help but wonder — how that emotive and creative journey might have been undertaken six, seven, eight years ago. You will never know that, and there’s something unfortunate (and) damaging about that. But there’s something also beneficial about that because we’re doing it now, and it’s beautiful. It’s a way to post tribute to our beloved brother. All of it just has that much more weight emotionally and creatively, and we don’t take that lightly.”
Asked if the surviving SOUNDGARDEN members could perform the new songs live one day, Cameron said: “We haven’t really gotten there yet. We’re just trying to get the music together. But I think there might be some situations where it would be really cool to do that. It’s just a matter of getting the right people together, and we’ve got some amazing people that we’ve been working with, some singers that have expressed interest. So, we’re really, really excited about what that could potentially look like.”
In September, Cameron was asked by Lyndsey Parker of Gold Derby and Lyndsanity! with Lyndsey Parker when the upcoming SOUNDGARDEN album was written and recorded with Chris. Matt said: “Well, gosh, we started songwriting together, trading demos back and forth around 2015, ’16, something like that. And then we had some sessions in 2017 before we went out on tour, just rough rehearsal. We recorded some rehearsals. But the vocals that we’re using are from the demos that we all recorded together. And so we’re just sort of building our tracks around those vocal parts. But yeah, it sounds killer, and we’re really excited to finish it.”
After Parker noted that it “must be emotional and bittersweet to hear” Cornell‘s voice and to hear those tracks a decade after they were originally laid down, Cameron concurred. “It really is,” he said. “But I think we’re trying to stay focused on the overall sound of it and all the reasons for us doing it. But, yeah, it’s been tough to solo up that voice and hear him loud and clear. But I think the fans will like it and it’s gonna be a really nice way to finish the creative chapter in SOUNDGARDEN.”
Cameron also confirmed that one of the songs that will appear on SOUNDGARDEN‘s new album is a track that he co-wrote, called “The Road Less Traveled”. He said: “I wrote this music that I didn’t really know if it would fit for SOUNDGARDEN, but I just sent Chris all these musical ideas around 2016 or so, ’16, ’15. And that’s one that he really liked. He made an arrangement from my demo and then he added vocals to it, and it came out really, really good. The lyrics are mesmerizing, as always. But, yeah, that’s gonna be a really great one for people to hear. It has all the trademark elements that SOUNDGARDEN fans might be familiar with, as well as a little bit of new territory. And there’s two or three other songs that do sound like the band, but I think we were able to sort of stretch out a little bit creatively, and hopefully when people hear that song, they’ll notice that as well. But, yeah, I guess it’s hard rock. It’s sort of bluesy, sort of psychedelic, sort of folky, I guess all the things that we were known for. So, I hope people like that one when they finally do hear it.”
This past May, Thayil told Rolling Stone that he was optimistic SOUNDGARDEN‘s final album would see the light of day. “Our objective and goal was always to complete that,” he said. “I probably have OCD enough to not want to leave something unfinished or incomplete like that, so I think the more we can attend to our body of work and our catalog…I think everyone in the band feels that way. I don’t just to attend to my work, but the collective work, and in this case specifically, the work of Chris.”
Thayil continued: “I have pride for what I did and I want to see that come out. It doesn’t exist in the vacuum. It exists as a collaboration with Matt and Ben and Chris, but it takes on an entirely different weight when you think about what it is you’re honoring, and the work that you’re paying tribute to. It is us collectively. We want to do it proud. And that part of us is certainly one of the most intimate components of what SOUNDGARDEN has been since 1984.”
He added: “It would be a great gift to the fans. And I do think about this, and I don’t know how strange this sounds, but I feel like it’s a gift to Chris too.”
Back in April 2023, SOUNDGARDEN and Vicky Cornell announced that they had reached “an amicable out-of-court resolution” regarding the release of recordings made before the singer’s death.
The resolution came less than two years after SOUNDGARDEN and Vicky came to a temporary agreement that would transfer the SOUNDGARDEN social media accounts and web site to the band’s remaining members, Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd and their managers, Red Light Management. This included SOUNDGARDEN‘s web site, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
In March 2021, Thayil, Cameron, Shepherd and their business manager Rit Venerus filed papers in Washington state U.S. District Court claiming that Vicky Cornell had locked them out of their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, Top Spin and Pinterest accounts, as well as SOUNDGARDEN‘s official web site, and changing all the passwords.
Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd claimed their socials were previously managed by their then-management company Patriot Management. They said they later learned that Patriot had handed over all the login information to Vicky after Patriot was terminated in October 2019.
The band asked a judge to order Vicky Cornell to hand over the passwords or include a final posting stating, “SOUNDGARDEN has temporarily suspended its official social media accounts due to pending litigation.”
Cornell was found hanged in his room at the MGM Grand Detroit hotel in May 2017, following a SOUNDGARDEN show at the city’s Fox Theatre. His body was found soon after he had spoken with a “slurred” voice to his wife by phone. The death was ruled a suicide.
In December 2019, Vicky filed a lawsuit against the surviving SOUNDGARDEN members, alleging the group owed Cornell‘s estate hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties and the rights to seven unreleased recordings made before the singer’s death. Cornell is credited as a writer on all seven songs, receiving sole credit on two, “Cancer” and “Stone Age Mind”. He wrote “Road Less Traveled”, “Orphans” and “At Ophians Door” with Matt Cameron; “Ahead Of The Dog” with Kim Thayil; and “Merrmas” with Ben Shepherd.
At the time, Vicky claimed that Chris made seven recordings at his personal studio in Florida in 2017, adding that there was no explicit agreement as to whether the recordings were meant for SOUNDGARDEN, which made Chris the exclusive owner. However, the surviving SOUNDGARDEN members responded by saying that the unreleased recordings were the result of writing and recording sessions going as far back as 2015. They also pointed to public interviews with Chris and Thayil that suggested that SOUNDGARDEN had been working on the material since 2015, and detailed recording sessions up until April 2017, just one month before Chris‘s death. SOUNDGARDEN also included several text exchanges from Vicky, in which she referred to the unreleased recordings as the “SG files”. They also provided a March 2017 e-mail from Vicky which said that Chris was travelling for the “SG record”. The band went on to refute Vicky‘s claim that Chris‘s recordings took place in his personal studio in Florida in 2017, insisting that most of the actual sound files “significantly predate 2017” and that the recording sessions took place in Seattle and New York while the band was touring.
Responding to Vicky‘s lawsuit, Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron claimed that they “don’t have possession” of their “own creative work,” and alleged that “Vicky Cornell has possession of the only existing multi-track recordings of the last SOUNDGARDEN tracks that include Chris Cornell‘s instrumental parts and vocals. All of the band members jointly worked on these final tracks, Vicky now claims ownership of the final SOUNDGARDEN album.”
Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron initially accused Vicky Cornell of misusing funds from the January 2019 “I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell” concert. After being challenged by Cornell‘s attorneys with the threat of sanctions, SOUNDGARDEN withdrew that portion of its countersuit, while its lawyers wrote at the time that the band believes the claims “remain well-founded.”
In February 2021, Vicky Cornell sued the surviving members of SOUNDGARDEN over the buyout price for her stake in the band. In the lawsuit, Vicky Cornell said Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd offered her just $300,000 for Chris‘s share. This amount, she said, is far lower than the real value of the Chris Cornell estate’s interests in SOUNDGARDEN, especially considering the fact that the band got an offer of $16 million from an outside investor for SOUNDGARDEN‘s masters.
