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Kim Thayil Discusses Releasing Unheard Soundgarden Material

Soundgarden's Kim Thayil has discussed future releases from the band – and how they plan to complete previously unheard original music.

Kim Thayil Discusses Releasing Unheard Soundgarden Material

Following the news of their much-deserved nomination in 2020's Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, Soundgarden's Kim Thayil has once again spoken about how the band plan on releasing unheard live recordings, as well as unreleased original material, in the future.

"The Louder Than Love album just passed its 30 anniversary," the guitarist tells Billboard. "We were very busy this year with other anniversary releases and, of course, the Artists Den release, but Louder Than Love will get a special package, probably to celebrate its 31st anniversary. And I think we'd like to put the Louder Than Live album out; It was released promotionally back in the day but never available commercially. Since it's all over YouTube we should make a nice little package available for release, including the DV, which was us live at The Whisky [in Los Angeles]. That would be the one document of [bassist] Jason Everman's time with us."

When asked about if there's any unheard original music – including prior workings featuring the late Chris Cornell – Kim reveals: "There's stuff we recorded back in the early days with Sub Pop, just low-budget eight-track stuff we did with Jack Endino that never came out. In terms of stuff we're working on, that's kind of static right now. At some point we hope to work on that and complete the material we were writing."

Of course, earlier in the year Kerrang! asked Kim if fans would ever get to hear the follow-up to King Animal that they were working on, to which the six-stringer replied: “When Soundgarden ended, prior to that last tour, we had spent a year on and off in-between Pearl Jam gigs and Chris’ solo tours, we would get together and write. We had written and demoed over half a dozen songs that were complete and we probably had another half a dozen in development stage and we were working on the next album, the follow-up to King Animal. We could probably finish them – it would require me, Matt and Ben to get the vocal performances that Chris recorded and play along with it to finish the songs. We can do that. And sometime in the future we will do that.

“At this point, we don’t have possession of those work tapes. There’s a lot of loose ends there, stuff that I would love to do with Matt and Ben. There’s some stuff I’d like to find out if Chris had written lyrics for any of these musical ideas. We don’t know yet.”

Watch this space…

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