Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil recently gave an update on the band’s upcoming album. He addressed the process behind the project in a statement shared on OMO News.
The album features previously unreleased recordings that Thayil and the other surviving members of Soundgarden made with late frontman Chris Cornell before his death in 2017. Thayil discussed how different this project was from the band’s past recording experiences.
“It was very different from other records,” Kim Thayil said. “You don’t start at one point with song ideas and demos and kind of record the drums and build it. We kind of had to work in a different direction. We had to build our performances.”
“I mean, the songs were by and large done, but the recordings and the performances weren’t, except for what we had with the vocals and some drums,” he continued. “So then we had to just kind of… It was very forensic in nature. We’d kind of have to tear it all apart and kind of piece it back together.”
Thayil went on to describe the emotional weight of working on the material.
“And, again, spending a lot of time in the studio listening to the material is both… It’s a great pleasure,” he said. “It presented a lot of enthusiasm, an opportunity for us, but it’s also a little bit difficult. And you’re constantly balancing the responsibility and duty towards the material and towards a beloved friend’s work and our work together. So it was very unusual. It was a strange thing to do. And I know that we’re not the only people that have had to explore the work and the relationships with it in a similar situation.”
Thayil confirmed there is no release date set yet for the album.
“We don’t [have a release date yet],” he said. “We’re dealing with the record label, trying to work out contractual understandings. And you have to think about the promotion, the production… So we have to work all that out and coordinate it with ourselves, management, the record label, and all those processes are in motion. And again, it’s very different. I mean, it’s been so many years, a lot of these contractual obligations expired, so we have to kind of work them out again.”
Thayil’s comments come as the long-in-the-works project continues to take shape after years of delays and complications.
The record has been years in the making. The recordings date back to before Cornell’s death in May 2017. The band has been piecing together the material into what is shaping up to be an eight-song collection. Drummer Matt Cameron confirmed in July that the album was in the mixing stage, marking one of the most concrete signs of progress the project has seen.
Getting to this point required clearing significant legal hurdles. Soundgarden and the Chris Cornell estate spent years locked in a dispute over the ownership and use of the unreleased recordings before reaching an amicable settlement in 2023. That resolution paved the way for the surviving members to finally move forward with finishing the material.
This will not be the first posthumous release tied to Cornell’s legacy. In 2020, Cornell’s family released “No One Sings Like You Anymore.” The covers album, which he recorded a year before his death, featured renditions of songs by artists like Prince and John Lennon. That release offered fans a glimpse into Cornell’s musical tastes outside of Soundgarden. It also set a precedent for the estate’s willingness to share unheard material with the public.
The legal issues are now settled and mixing is underway. The surviving members appear closer than ever to finally delivering the long-awaited final chapter of Soundgarden’s catalog with Cornell.
No further details on the album’s timeline have been announced. Further updates may follow.
