Yahoo has premiered a previously unreleased Mad Season instrumental titled “Ascention” from Barrett Martin’s The Singing Earth soundtrack. Mad Season’s last original material released were three tracks featuring Mark Lanegan on lead vocals in 2013 for the Above reissue. They released the live album Sonic Evolution in 2015, featuring Chris Cornell on lead vocals.
Mike McCready discussed writing Mad Season’s “River of Deceit” in a September 2015 Alternative Nation interview.
“With Layne [Staley] and ‘River of Deceit,’ to get back into that time period, it was an interesting time. There was a lot of darkness going on, but there was also some light, and there was some music happening. Mad Season had started with Barrett [Martin], [John] Baker [Saunders], Layne and myself. It was kind of an open template in terms of music. When I talked to Layne about this project initially, it was just kind of like: ‘Layne do whatever you want to do. Do you have any vocals, or any songs you want to bring in? We’ll do whatever.’
I kind of wanted it to be that type of band, where all four guys were making decisions on it, in terms of songwriting or whatever. I remember having that conversation with him, he seemed into that. He had been reading a book called The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran at the time, and he explained that to me, and I thought wow, that is super deep.
I came up with this little melody, and I felt kind of proud of it. It was a new thing, it was a situation where I was starting to be able to write songs and feel comfortable in Mad Season, where I maybe wasn’t with Pearl Jam because there were so many songwriters in Pearl Jam that were really good, and I at that time didn’t have the confidence, and I think that Mad Season allowed that just by it happening.”
