There is a
very important question that you need to ask yourself before picking up the new
Soundgarden album, King Animal. Does your allegiance lie with the version of
Soundgarden that created Louder than Love
and Ultramega ok? Are you on the other side of the fence that
loves the entire Superunknown album
and the more mainstream bits and pieces of Badmotorfinger
and Down on the Upside? The reason that I ask this is because your
alliance with one of those two camps will likely determine how receptive you
are to Soundgarden’s newest offering King
Animal.
King Animal is a step back in time. I have said numerous times here in other
reviews that when older, established bands put out new music lately, they are
trending toward recapturing their sound instead of reinventing it. Reinvention is for the young kids that may be
looking for new fans. It is pretty
apparent that many older bands know their fan base and want to cater to that
(even in misguided attempts to connect to the wrong fan base, right
Aerosmith?). Soundgarden has done the
same thing, for the most part. The
biggest difference here is that while KISS, or ZZ Top, or even Aerosmith to a
certain degree, have all stayed together and toured, released albums, and
basically carried on, business as usual, Soundgarden has been apart for the
majority of fifteen years.
The breakup
of Soundgarden was pretty unexpected to me at least, I was in ninth grade at
the time, so of course I thought it was terrible, and with an often mocked but
relatively successful solo career for frontman Chris Cornell, along with the
formation of Audioslave (along with drummer Matt Cameron signing on with fellow
Grunge Rock stalwart Pearl Jam), it was pretty obvious to see that a reunion
was not really in the cards. Whether it
was money or that they just missed each other (I wonder which it could be) that
caused Soundgarden to reunite in 2010, it set into motion a series of events
that has culminated in the release of a greatest hits album, live album
(finally, I’ve been waiting for a live album since my days wearing braces and
“husky” jeans) as well as a song for The
Avengers soundtrack and finally a full album of new material.
Instead of
revisiting the glory days of Superunknown
though, the band has gone further back in time to recapture the early days of
grunge. The days of heavy, plodding
guitars mixed with occasional solos, the days of screeches and wails from your
vocalist (though at this point, Cornell is nowhere near his peak) and the days
of a rhythm section that keeps everything in time with rarely a flair or a
flourish. This is grunge. This is probably the album that many of the
old-school Soundgarden fans wanted made after Badmotorfinger, if not its predecessor Louder Than Love. It holds
similar polish to the later Soundgarden releases yet still has the raw
heaviness that seemed to disappear as the band’s success and popularity
increased.
This is not
a perfect album by any stretch of the imagination. Like many grunge albums, both those released
in its heyday and subsequent releases by bands trying to recapture that time
period, many of the songs sound similar to the point where it is not just a
“style” as much as a crutch. This is not
to say that the entire album sounds the same, but if you cut it in half, you
will see the heavy, plodding of typical grunge music contained to the first
half while the lighter, more Down on the
Upside–ish music is relegated to the latter half. The second half of the album still holds a certain
heaviness that seemed to be absent on Down
on the Upside though, effectively bringing the tracks full circle to the
kind of music older fans may expect out of Soundgarden. It does not make for a bad album by any
means, and honestly the more I listen to it, the better it sounds, it just
makes it fairly predictable. As
previously stated, Cornell has lost a bit on his voice and while it is
phenomenal in a smaller, quieter setting (his acoustic live album Songbook is one the best albums of the
past decade at least) it comes out as more of growl here, and not the wail that
we have come to expect (though he tries with limited success on many of the
tracks). This is not terrible by any
stretch of the imagination, but unexpected and unfortunate for sure. The album is long, too (and that isn’t even
counting the deluxe edition bonus of demo tracks) yet still does not include
“Live to Rise”, their track from the Avengers
soundtrack. This is another misstep as
that would be a great way to reel in fans of that song that are not entirely
familiar with the back catalogue of the band.
Because of the nature of the music and the length of the album itself,
it can start to drone on a bit, but much music from that era is like that so I
can’t knock the band too much for at least staying true to form.
For those
of you that have been waiting with baited breath since 1997 for a new album,
and those that have been standing outside a Best Buy since 2010 with the hopes
of getting a full album of new material out of the band before the eventual,
and probably inevitable, implosion, go and get this album (hell you probably
already have it). For those that want a
trip back in time when no one had heard of bath salts and Hurricane Sandy and
9/11 was still just the day after 9/10, play King Animal loud, and play it proud.
No comments:
Post a Comment