Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil recently had a chat with Stereogum regarding the bands progress with their new album. When asked about the status of their new material Thayil offered:

“We’re recording. We’re kind of doing it in stages. We have about 14 songs in various stages of completion. Previously, we’d just block out a bunch of time and go and track everything at once, but we can’t really do that right now. Matt has commitments to Pearl Jam, Chris has a solo tour happening and Soundgarden is touring in July. So we do the studio thing around those other engagements, which actually is turning out to be a lot better for us.

It takes the pressure off in some ways. It’s not like, OK you’ve got three weeks and everything needs to get done in those three weeks. We can work at our own pace right night and take things one step at a time. We’re really enjoying it. We don’t have a record company or management pressuring us to hurry up, so we can really savor the process this time.”

Meanwhile, when quizzed about the direction of the material, Thayil responded with”

“The vibe of the songs is definitely very heavy. We’ve always tried to explore how to make this really heavy, aggressive music without sounding like a bunch of knuckle-dragging meatheads. I think these songs are kind of exploring that idea. Ways of emoting aggression and anger and hostility in ways that feel new. You know, we never were really chipper guys. We were never the party band, or even a particularly social band.

We were always really just hard workers and a kind of musician’s band. That’s what we wanted to be that. We wanted to play for an audience that reminded us of ourselves back when we were young, I always liked the idea that our fans were that guy or girl who collected records and wanted to start a band of their own and play good music. I always imagined we were the band that made the party end.

Like, ok guys it’s time to leave now, someone just put on Superunknown! I always felt like we made music that was good for driving, good for listening to really loud. Wait, does that answer your question at all? The new songs sound really heavy. I’ll just say that.”