Chris Cornell Talks Writing New Soundgarden Album: ‘It’s More Relaxed’

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Chris Cornell discussed Soundgarden’s next album, the followup to 2012’s King Animal, in a recent interview with KISW, transcribed by Alternative Nation.

“I think one of the things that was a factor in us kind of splitting up in the first place was that everything had a clock on it. It was a time period where, I guess in a good way, the music business was still pretty healthy. You were always in a cycle of writing, recording, and touring. We were late for everything, always. We’d sit down and have these meetings, and we ended up not having meetings because it was so awful.

There’d be a counter in front of us, and someone would put a red X on the date that we were going to start the promotional tour for the album that we had not started to write yet. So now, we just write, there’s no discussion really at all about when it’s going to come out, or what that means, we just write songs. It doesn’t happen any faster or slower, it just seems like it’s more relaxed.”

Chris Cornell discussed the November 2015 terrorist attack on Eagles of Death Metal’s show at the Bataclan in Paris on KISW’s Men’s Room yesterday, and how he had difficulty finding a way to talk about the show to his own live audience, especially having played the same venue a few years prior. Alternative Nation transcribed a couple of quotes.

“Normally when a horrible thing, a tragedy, you go out on stage, and you talk about it, and you try to say something. Either you are sort of flooded with emotion, or you’re pissed off, and you go out and yell and scream. That was a situation where I felt like, I don’t think I really want to bring this up now while there’s an audience sitting in seats the same way the audience was sitting in those seats watching Eagles of Death Metal. Innocent people just out trying to relax and see a rock show, and forget about the day for a minute. That’s all they were guilty of.”

He also discussed Kurt Cobain’s death.

“It’s something that happened I think when Kurt died. At the time, I think people considered me someone that was somewhat together (laughs). I don’t know why, they didn’t know me, so I was getting calls to participate in interviews where I think they kind of wanted to hear somebody say a positive thing. I remember saying, ‘There’s no silver lining to this. There’s nothing good to say about this.’ It’s a horrible thing.”

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Brett Buchanan
Brett previously hosted the BWR wrestling and MMA podcast, interviewing pro wrestling and MMA stars like Kurt Angle, Seth Rollins, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Bruce Buffer, AJ Styles, Rob Van Dam, Jeff Hardy, Edge, and DDP. After ending BWR, Brett opened GrungeReport.net in May 2009. The site changed its name to AlternativeNation.net in June 2013.  Brett ran Scott Weiland's social media accounts for his final 'Master Blaster' tour in fall 2015 and continued to run the accounts after Weiland's death until July 2016. On Alternative Nation, Brett controls all aspects of the website and reports the day to day news.  He has interviewed members of Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Imagine Dragons, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, Stone Temple Pilots, and The Smiths. Brett has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and on the Reelz Channel. You can reach Brett at contact @alternativenation.net