Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on the State of Love & Trust Podcast, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil opened up about the sessions for the band’s final album with the late Chris Cornell. According to him, the process has been “emotionally difficult and challenging.”

Thayil said the following:

“In terms of the process, the goal is gold. It’s difficult because it’s atypical in the way we’re pursuing this recording. Obviously we’re missing a creative member. Fortunately, we have his works, we understand, that aspect of his vision. And we have to understand what our vision is from our creative viewpoint because a lot of these songs were written with us or by us — Chris or Matt or Ben or myself. So we have to explore that kind of down one person. But also the whole process, it’s not as obviously linear. There isn’t a start point and then a budgeted schedule and an ending point. There’s kind of a series of sideways moves and retroactive visitations. It’s, like, ‘Oh, we have to go back and fill this in,’ because, the track we have is just a demoed part and I gotta redo that guitar part. So that’s unusual and very different. And, again, the budgeting of the time and the money is also different. It’s not, like, ‘Here, we’re gonna go in in March and we’ll finish by May, and hopefully by May we’ll be doing the background vocals and guitar solos. And then we send it off to mixing.’ We’re kind of fitting it in with the schedules of the individuals, the producers, engineers, Matt, Ben and myself.

It’s emotionally difficult and challenging because we tended to write songs that we liked, songs that we enjoyed, songs that moved us. So if it didn’t do anything for us, we probably weren’t gonna pursue it. So it is moving us emotionally, intellectually, psychologically. So you’re constantly re-exploring that within this context. And that’s different. That’s a trip. So the fact that we love it, that we enjoy it, we enjoy the goal, we enjoy where we want to be, where we want this project to be, that makes it pleasant and a labor of love. The process is different and at times difficult. But the goal and the end game of the project is the best that we can have.”

[via Blabbermouth]