There is an almost unbearable poignancy to Soundgarden’s next album. It is 70% finished, according to drummer Matt Cameron, and though he insists the band is excited to complete it, the circumstances surrounding its creation make it unlike anything in their catalogue.
The songs themselves are not new. They were written in 2015 and 2016, and Chris Cornell recorded vocals on the demos before his death in 2017. What the band is now doing, what Cameron calls a “really amazing and bittersweet process”, is building around those takes, reconstructing the framework of a Soundgarden record with Cornell’s voice as both blueprint and ghost.
“We started songwriting together, trading demos back and forth around 2015, '16, something like that,” Cameron explains. “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.”
The description alone underscores the gravity of the project. These are not outtakes hastily assembled for posthumous release; they are the beginnings of what might have been Soundgarden’s seventh album, now completed in the absence of the man who wrote and sang them.
Cameron admits that hearing Cornell isolated in the studio is a heavy task: “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.”
That phrase, “finish the creative chapter”, lands with finality. Soundgarden were always a band of immense weight, a monolith within grunge that resisted compromise. To end on Cornell’s own demos feels fitting, even if it is heartbreaking. The album will not merely be a release; it will stand as both tribute and closure, ensuring the last word comes from the voice that defined them.
