Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd discussed how the band have avoided being stale with their songwriting on King Animal and their next album in a new WeldBHam interview.
“It’s pretty much the same. Each one of us brings in a song and we work on it — or we’ll all start something together, though there’s less of that now than there was on any previous record, where we would just start jamming and form something out of it. We’d do that and we’d each bring in a song and work on it, and then one of the other guys would change it or add something. This time around, we haven’t tended to jam as much. We’ve just been more focused on working on the next song.
We’re more capable of recording at any second and working out ideas than we used to be. Of course, we’ve aged and figured out how to do things a lot better. Same thing with King Animal. It was like, ‘We know what we’re doing, and we can do it better now than we used to.’ So our songwriting, we have it more honed, and we know more what to do. It’s not stale or anything — it’s just more honed, more simpatico with each other. It’s easier and more attainable to get to the idea.”
Soundgarden are currently on tour in North America, with plans to release a new album in late 2017 or 2018.
