From the sticker on the front of the disc, this is \u201cthe most requested Soundgarden concert release of all time!\u201d Well, that might be a misnomer. This sprawling, career-spanning concert originally broadcast on PBS in 2013 as part of their Artists Den concert series is quite the undertaking from a band like this. Getting to hear Cornell again is quite the revelation, because by the second track, \u201cMy Wave,\u201d his vocals are shot and it\u2019s clear that his best days are behind him. His vocals are weak and he can\u2019t compete with his previous self. While that\u2019s a damn shame, it sets the stage for the band to sound their best.<\/p>\n
Opening the concert, the seven minute \u201cIncessant Mace\u201d is quite the rocker, tearing things down and setting things up for quite the balls to the wall rock show. Apart from the tracks from the then-new King Animal<\/i>, like \u201cBeen Away Too Long,\u201d Cornell\u2019s vocals are a shadow of what they were back in the day. But on \u201cWorse Dreams,\u201d where he\u2019s not screaming the whole song, the vocals sound a bit like they should. It\u2019s as if he was straining too hard to hit notes he couldn\u2019t reach anymore and that resulted in him blowing through songs that might have been better being left out of the setlist.<\/p>\n
Luckily, Matt Cameron, Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd are solid as a rock and bring it like they always have, almost as if they have to make up for Chris\u2019 shortcomings. \u201cFlower\u201d rocks harder than ever and is a personal favorite. Unfortunately, \u201cSpoonman\u201d comes across rushed and weak and that seems to be the overall flow of this disc.<\/p>\n
Every time Cornell starts to scream, it\u2019s like nails on a chalkboard: very out of place and kind of sad. The slower tracks from the new disc like the excellent \u201cBones Of Birds,\u201d \u201cRowing,\u201d and \u201cNon-State Actor,\u201d are where he really shines and one remembers why he was so great in the first place.<\/p>\n
Ditto with a classic like \u201cFell On Black Days,\u201d where he sounds like he always did and Thayil is just wailing away behind him making the song sound as great as it did on the record. But tracks like \u201cA Thousand Days Before\u201d fall apart and sound bored and tired, from band and Cornell alike. It\u2019s an interesting dichotomy with the band: some of the newer songs sound lifeless while others sound forceful, and lder tracks tend to blur the line between great and just bland. Cornell does come alive on \u201cRusty Cage,\u201d one of the few bright spots on the second disc that doesn\u2019t sound dry and boring.<\/p>\n
The almost eight minute \u201c4th Of July\u201d and nearly seven minute \u201cNew Damage\u201d are pleasing but after a while get very tedious. Ditto to \u201cOutshined,\u201d where Cornell seems bored singing it for the thousandth or so time; only when he turns the vocals over to the crowd does the song come alive. If it wasn\u2019t for Matt Cameron and Thayil\u2019s solo, I think \u201cBlack Hole Sun\u201d would have faded into the ether without even a whimper. It just sounds down and devoid of life. <\/p>\n
Some soloing and feedback close out the disc with \u201cSlaves And Bulldozers,\u201d a song much more powerful on record in my opinion. Amazingly, they insert a bit of Zeppelin\u2019s \u201cIn My Time of Dying\u201d to the song, just like at their last show. <\/p>\n
To be honest, this is a decent enough performance but shouldn\u2019t have been released as a full disc. It shows off a bit of how sad they sounded towards the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5753],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-45802","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-soundgarden","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45802"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}