Kim Thayil discussed Soundgarden’s new album in a new WRIF interview.
“We’re shooting [to release it in] late 2017. We’ve already done some writing. We have some more writing to do, and then there’s the whole studio process.”
He continued: “Some people whip out albums in a few weeks or a few months, and Soundgarden, given our different schedules, it takes a matter of months. We do something for a few weeks and then come back a few months later, or a month later, and revisit it.”
Thayil added: “We’re fairly attentive to what we do, so we wanna make sure that it has precision where it needs precision, it has chaos and looseness where you want the song to be wild and it has color where you want it to really shine. And we really roll the thing over. And that’s our process. It’s probably because you have four different, strong opinions and four different songwriters without the addition of the producer. So it’s definitely a fun and dynamic process.”
Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Temple of the Dog drummer Matt Cameron was recently interviewed on The Trap Set and discussed Soundgarden’s business.
“It became a little bit of a whirlwind in the sense that we had to keep producing. You have to keep the ball rolling, because all of a sudden you have a lot of people who are making money off this thing. It becomes a machine, once it becomes successful. Those inherent pressures were felt by all of us I think.”
“I don’t think of it in the creative realm, but I think of it in the performing realm, for sure. That’s definitely a part of it where you have to keep that side of it going as well, because that’s where the livelihood factor comes in for all of us, that’s how we make our money these days.
There was a whirlwind element attached to it all, just our music scene becoming really big and powerful. All the bands from here started to have commercial success, so that gave us a little more clout in the industry.”
“I was happy that music was getting better. [Money] didn’t really make me happier, but I loved being able to buy a sweet car. I loved that feeling. I came from from a tour and had enough to go buy a BMW M3. I was just like, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
I always hated paying rent, so I was able to buy a house. If there was a goal, that was it, to be able to not fucking pay rent. So that felt great, that kind of stuff felt fantastic. To be able to pay my Mom off, I borrowed some money from her as a kid, that was fantastic.”
The host later asked Cameron about Soundgarden’s initial meeting about business issues led to a reunion. He also asked if the band thought that they should get back together and make some more money.
“Pretty much (laughs), yeah, that’s basically it. We got back together to talk about I don’t know, merchandising or something like that, getting some t-shirts out there. We started to talk about some issues, and decided to try to give it another go.”
