Soundgarden sounded like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, and name-checked the Beatles, but had grown up listening to Gang of Four. Like many of their grunge contemporaries, Soundgarden generally drew inspiration from the ’70s mainstream and ’80s alternative, creating a mix that quoted equally from punk, post-punk, metal, classic rock, and, later, psychedelia. In one sense, they were very much of their era.
That was always a bit weird, not just because Soundgarden was a seminal artist in the early ’90s rise of grunge, and not just because they’d left behind a catalog that was widely critically adored, but also because out of any of the other big ’90s bands, Soundgarden seemed as if they would still have something to offer another generation of musicians after nu-metal had finished defiling the corpse of grunge. Soundgarden was absent in a way other ’90s remnants weren’t. All you could do was hear the same few Soundgarden hits repeated on radio, which began to feel more and more like ghostly transmissions from ten or fifteen or twenty years past. Due to some legal stuff, you couldn’t even find throwback merchandise.
Its members had moved on in ways that (OK, for the moment) seemed a bit more permanent, and never seemed to entertain the idea of a reunion, or getting back together with a different singer, or whatever other variation numerous ’90s bands had exhumed themselves in. It seemed as if Soundgarden was truly dead and gone. The rest of Soundgarden stayed pretty quiet, the (always underrated) guitarist Kim Thayil contributing to a few things here and there, bassist Ben Shepherd essentially falling off the map. Matt Cameron became the longest-serving drummer in Pearl Jam, and seemingly a truly pivotal member in that band as well, ending their bad luck streak with drummers and preventing them from becoming Spinal Tap. While their peers and contemporaries flared out tragically (Alice In Chains, Nirvana) but in ways that solidified legacies, or others continued soldiering on in a decade where their relevance waned, singer Chris Cornell decided to front the remaining members of Rage Against The Machine as Audioslave, and then embarrass himself with one solo album that was a bastardized mash-up of alt-rock and adult contemporary (2007’s Carry On), and another that was just an ill-advised, mis-matched collaboration with Timbaland (2009’s Scream). If you got into Soundgarden in the ’00s, you got into them during what was a bit of a wasteland for the band. For a while there, it seemed like people forgot about Soundgarden.
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