Mixing sessions have begun for grunge legends Soundgarden‘s final studio album with their late vocalist/guitarist Chris Cornell. The band’s surviving members have been devoting much of their time across the past year or so to fleshing out the recordings left behind by Cornell that were intended for this upcoming record. Producer Terry Date (Deftones, Pantera), who worked with Soundgarden on “Louder Than Love” and “Badmotorfinger“, was brought in for these new sessions.
That record has now been turned over to Joe Barresi (Tool, Avenged Sevenfold), who is overseeing the mixing sessions for the 8 songs. Outside of the grieving process that followed Cornell‘s untimely death in 2017, a bitter legal dispute between the band and his widow impeded the completion of this album for several years.
During those legal proceedings, the existence of seven songs intended for that record were revealed, they included:
“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)
Merrmas” (Chris Cornell/Ben Shepherd)
Stone Age Mind” (Chris Cornell)
Appearing recently on Dean Delray‘s ‘Let There Be Talk‘ podcast, the band’s drummer/vocalist Matt Cameron confirmed that some eight tracks featuring vocals from Cornell will make it onto this posthumous release from the band. Cameron went on to say of the origins of the material found on this effort [transcribed by Blabbermouth.net]:
“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.
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.”
Speaking on the breadth of the material featured, Cameon offered:
“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.”
As for release plans for the album, Cameon stated:
“Well, we don’t really have a [release] date yet. We’re just gonna try to get this thing mixed, get it over the finish line, and then hopefully we’ll have a better idea what’s gonna come next. We’re just taking it one step at a time ’cause it’s been kind of a long process just to get to here.”
Regarding the emotions being stirred by working on this effort without Cornell present, Cameron stated:
“Well, I’d been listening to those demos since we recorded them together. And I always thought there’s three or four really, really strong songs. So, I’m really looking forward to getting it done and putting it out there. And I’m hoping the reaction won’t be too intense for people, but I know that it will be because it has been for us.
But I think at this stage of the game, we’ve been listening to it so much that I think we’ve built a little bit of a callus up to the emotional side of it, and we’re just trying to get all the tracks. And it sounds like Soundgarden. It’s just like we’re working on a Soundgarden album. We are.”
