Soundgarden
King Animal

The 90s, it feels like just yesterday, the invasion of the "grunge" phenomenon, for many just a fleeting depressed trend, made of "superfuzz" music, lyrics on the edge of "like suicide", lots of anger, ragged clothes, true friendships. Bands supporting each other, a desire to kick the glitzy tradition of the '80s in the ass, with sequins, glitter, makeup, and various hairstyles... Stories made of small clubs, alcoholic and toxic nights, each perhaps memorable, to be remembered, each a different story, to be lived to the fullest because maybe tomorrow eyes won't open, and if they do, it will be a blank slate, reset, and start over. Another ride, other people, other music, but always distorted and sick... Another trip...

Girls Girls Girls, Fuck Fuck Fuck, Alcohol and Drugs. Remove the Girls, Fuck and you're left with Alcohol and Drugs. Consequently, a movement focused mainly on pessimism and "mal de vivre" but also, and above all, with a message sometimes well-hidden about the desire for rebirth: resist, fight, and not give up. "Down in a Hole" however swallowed two of the leading figures of the Seattle scene, with Kurt, it all ended in 1994, and Layne faded away in total indifference almost ten years later... I’m Alone... and a Man in the Box, R.I.P. Junkhead... With Scott, we are working on it, but for now, he is winning.

But this is history now, anyone who has visited the "alternative" (brr..) scene perfectly knows what we are talking about, and maybe gets bored to hear things that have been said and repeated...
The ’90s, it really feels like just yesterday, Badmotorfinger, Temple of the Dog, Superunknown, Louder Than Love... But if we stop for a moment to reflect, we realize that yesterday corresponds to 20 years ago. Other stories, other music, other attitudes have appeared and disappeared, and perhaps it no longer makes sense to talk about grunge or everything else that made Seattle great when in 2012 you hold an album titled "Soundgarden – King Animal".

Maybe no one expected a reunion of the Sound Garden, not after the (very) debatable turns of captain Cornell towards softer shores, after a fluctuating "against the machine" hiatus... It was thought we would see him on the MTV charts, in dance videos amidst scantily clad young ladies. But no.

Soundgarden returns, and magically so does the voice, not the one from the glory days, to be clear, but compared to the Audioslave period, it seems the captain has recovered the vocal cords to face the madness of a Garden tour.
The album, let's face it, is not a miracle, you won't find a new Superunknown, not even a crumb of its predecessors, but a continuation of the ultra-criticized Down on the Upside. The direction of the four horsemen, whether liked or not, was already that: more intimate atmospheres, softer sounds, abandoning the metal roughness, the raw punk, the super unknown brain searching, to settle in melodic openings and controlled psych-bursts.

By now we need to understand that it is not at all possible to return to the origins, indeed, it is foolish to have even hoped so, and if a mimicked imitation of past glory had emerged, it would have been almost ridiculous, almost grotesque, while thinking of four gentlemen nearly 50 years old, with reassuring bank accounts (I don't know about Ben and Kim, but Matt and Chris certainly don't have to look at job ads in the paper), still with the desire to reunite and revive the magic of once, their personal magic enclosed in a recording room, and put it on an album to share it with the world that has been waiting for 15 years even for just one note... all of this is almost movingly beautiful...

Especially if it opens with a thrill like "Been Away Too Long", 100% hard rock, still wanting to smash, a riff as simple as it is engaging, granite to the right taste, a drummer always among the best in the world in the rock field banging like a train from start to end, with the classic Soundgarden style blurry liquid break in the middle to then start tightly until the end. Gentlemen, here we are, these are the 2012 Soundgarden and we can only hope for the best. In fact, another burst arrives with "Non-State Actor", a bit slaves to the audio maybe, but with those classic offbeat breaks that distinguished the garden from the rest in the past. Cornell is in shape, Kim weaves crooked and lysergic plots in the background, Matt and Ben (only now do I realize he can really play the bass) are a killer machine. Even if the album were only two songs, for me they would already be enough...

The energy continues with the next two "By Crooked Steps", in an amiably unconventional time, and "A Thousand Days Before". But it's with the slow progress of the riff in "Blood on the Valley Floor" that my prejudices about a dull return almost dissolve, for me the best track on the album.

From here starts the reflective part, the tones slow down, everything becomes a bit darker, while listening to "Bones of Birds" in nocturnal solitary headphones, something rises from my stomach to my brain, a feeling of wrapping, Cornell’s double voice combined with this particular plot takes me back for a moment... Times gone that will remain in my memory forever, times of music in every corner, of impromptu unplugged performances for the few (un)lucky, of friendships born in an evening's cut out and then vanished, and of friendships that still last today.

The peculiarity for which I love Soundgarden and will love them forever, more than any other band, is the ability they alone have had to reach places in my mind through those riffs and sonic inventions, that particular way of structuring the piece in a different manner, even if sometimes only in some slight nuance, than every other group, that evocative, powerful, liberating voice to which I will always be indebted.

There is also room for a moment of "Euphoria" with "Halfway There", a pick-up in tone with "Worse Dream", to close in liquid nuances ("Eyelids Mouth") and tribal atmospheres ("Rowing"). This is the end...

There are good ideas (but Thayil's guitar is fearfully missing, buried by the rest), highs and lows, negligible pieces, impressions actually refer back to the conversation closed with Down on the Upside, where there were still some flashes of inspiration, but it was not enough for continuation... I like to think of "King Animal" as a resumption from that point, not as the stone on a definitive end, but as a new beginning. And even if it might not be so, seeing the name Soundgarden associated with a new album in 2012 has been enough for me...

The ’90s, it feels like just yesterday... Yet we've all gotten a little older, and you can feel it...

Call it whatever you want.

For me, the right name is: Maturity...