In 2017, Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden, passed away. On November 8th, 2025, the band was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In an interview right before the ceremony, his surviving bandmates say they are “pretty close” to finishing the last album they recorded with Cornell.
“…yeah, I’m really excited for people to hear it, have our fans hear it,” said drummer Matt Cameron. “It’s fun for us to be working on it. And sometimes listening to it, it’s overpowering. But, yeah, I’m super proud of the music that we did put together. And we’re pretty close [to finishing it]. And, yeah, it is nice having Terry on board with us, for sure.”
Terry, referring to Terry Date, who is producing the album and has previously worked with bands like Badmotorfinger and Louder Than Love.
A New Soundgarden Album
“One of the cool things about Terry is he never imposed his production style or sound on any bands,” explains guitarist Kim Thayil. “He would learn from the bands. And one of the things he would assert when he took a job was, ‘I want this to be a co-production thing.’ And it’s, like, ‘Well, that fits just perfect with the kind of band we are.’”
“There are a lot of producers out there who have a particular style — for instance, you think about Phil Spector and the ‘wall of sound.’ It’s, like, okay, well, that’s his thing,” he adds. “But producers had that kind of role in the ’60s and, to some degree, the ’70s, but with the way bands are post-1977, they have a sense of what they’re writing and what they wanna sound like, and the producers should simply facilitate that. And Terry’s that guy. I mean, you listen to records he’s done, and it’s very different from certainly what he’s done with us. There isn’t a signature Terry Date thing. It is him helping the band be the band.”
A New Sound
The band also says this album will mark a new sonic direction for their sound. ”There’s very familiar elements in some of this new music, but, yeah, there was a couple songs that felt like it was kind of a new chapter or it could have been a new chapter. So it’s really exciting to hear that. It’s bittersweet, of course,” says Cameron.
“I was going to get coffee down the hall from the control room, and Nate and Terry were playing it back — Nate’s our assistant engineer on it. It was, like, ‘Holy hell, that’s Soundgaren. It’s so cool to hear it again,” adds bassist Ben Shepherd about the upcoming album.
A big reason Soundgarden has waited so long to release the album is due to legal disputes with Cornell’s widow, Vicky Cornell. Thankfully, in 2023, they were granted permission to use vocals from demos recorded before the lead singer’s passing.
You can watch the full interview with Soundgarden below:
