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Home > Rob’s Editorial > The long awaited return of Soundgarden?

“”The 12 year break is over and school is back in session”” Chris Cornell (01-01-2010)

It’’s been over two years now since Chris Cornell broke the news via Twitter that the Grunge Gods were getting back together. A new website was launched and the Soundgarden fan club was fired up again with great anticipation from fans worldwide. Since then, well progress has been a bit steady!

The band released a ‘best of’ retrospective in multiple formats which included DVDs and extended vinyl versions, which were wonderful, and contained the unreleased track Black Rain to wet our appetites for what was about to happen.

A string of North American dates were played to a lucky few which appeared to be a warm-up for a grand reunion tour that would be one of the most welcome returns in the Rock world of late. Then it fizzled out a bit didn’t it?
The grand reunion tour planned out in my head never happened. Chris Cornell started working as a solo artist again and it started to look like this was never going to happen.

There may be light at the end of the (long) tunnel though; the band have confirmed they are working on new material but taking it steady. It should come out at some point in 2012.  Soundgarden of course, now share their drummer (Matt Cameron) with those other Grunge Gods ,Pearl Jam, who are still very much active as a touring band. So, schedules are going to tight if this situation continues and some slack for a lack of touring must be given to the band for this reason.

The greatest news however from the band is that they will finally be heading overseas on tour. They are booked in to headline Australia’’s Big Day Out festival early this year and then, wait for it, will be heading out in Europe for some festival appearances. They currently have five Euro dates up on their website but it’s early days for festival announcements and as long as I’’m not getting carried away with excitement again, I’’m sure there will be more.
There are no UK dates yet but surely they can’t miss us out?

If they do come over here then the most likely candidate for hosting them would be Sonisphere. Pearl Jam are in Europe at the same time so they could lend them a drummer. Download is very unlikely as all three headline slots are filled and it is unthinkable that Soundgarden would be doing anything else other than headlining. Or it could be something less obvious like a Hard Rock Calling type event.

I suppose it all depends on dates in the end but one thing’s for sure; if it’’s ever going to happen this year looks like the one. Dust off your copy of Superunknown and get ready!

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