According to drummer Matt Cameron, Soundgarden’s final album with late vocalist Chris Cornell is currently being mixed. Members Matt Cameron, guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Ben Shepard are working with renown rock and metal producer Terry Date (Pantera, Deftones, Limp Bizkit) who had previously worked with the band on 1989’s Louder Than Love and 1991’s Badmotorfinger.
Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron Shares The Details On Their Final LP
Soundgarden’s own Matt Cameron broke the news on Dean Delray’s “Let There Be Talk” podcast, where he discussed the details about the long awaited LP including how many songs are on the upcoming release: “We’d been sending demos back and forth since, like, 2013, ’14, something like that. I would send Chris some stuff. He would rearrange it, make a song out of it… I sent him three tracks, and then he would sing on top of the instrumentals that I’d written and rearrange them and everything. And then we started getting together in, like, 2015, ’16 at a couple of different studios, so we were preparing to make another album before that last tour in 2017.”
Cameron continues, “We recorded all the rehearsals and everything. And we did start writing a bunch of stuff together. But the stuff we’re working on now was from when… We are using some of the live rehearsal stuff, like some of the guitar stuff that Chris played guitar on, and then we’re using the vocals from these demos that he put together, with the music that we had written together. And, yeah, just kind of building on top of that.”
When asked about how much material was going to be on the album Matt replied, “Eight songs. I think that that’s pretty much all there is with vocals. We had some instrumentals left over that Kim wants work on. So maybe we’ll do some new stuff together, which would be fine by me.”
Eight Songs Is More Than What Was Initially Expected
Much of the saga surrounding this post-humous Chris Cornell-Soundgarden album has been made public. The remaining band members had been in a legal dispute with Chris Cornell’s widow and estate for a number of years, until both parties came to a resolution in April 2023. However, that resolution didn’t immediately dissolve all tensions, as Matt Cameron had noted in the months following that the band’s dispute with Cornell’s estate was still ongoing.
Through this legal dispute some documents were made public, including the track listing of the unreleased recordings by Chris Cornell, which credited seven songs to Cornell and various members of the band:
“Road Less Traveled” (Chris Cornell/Matt Cameron)
“Orphans” (Chris Cornell/Matt Cameron)
“At Ophians Door” (Chris Cornell/Matt Cameron)
“Cancer” (Chris Cornell)
“Ahead Of The Dog” (Chris Cornell/Kim Thayil)
“Mermas” (Chris Cornell/Ben Shepherd)
“Stone Age Mind” (Chris Cornell)
Bottom Line
Based on Matt Cameron’s recent interview, it seems there could be as many as eight songs the band has planned for their long awaited LP, and possibly more not featuring Cornell. If the project is in the mixing stage, 2027 could be the year that the final Chris Cornell Soundgarden album sees the light of day.
Leave a comment