Surviving SOUNDGARDEN Members Would Like To Complete Unfinished Recordings

According to The Pulse Of Radio, SOUNDGARDEN guitarist Kim Thayil told Music Radar in a new interview that he and the other surviving members of the band would like to add their parts to demos that were recorded by late frontman Chris Cornell for a now-abandoned seventh album — if only they could get hold of them.

Thayil explained: "We tried to get this going two years ago, but we're not in possession of any of the demos that Chris was working on... We have copies of them, but what we need are the files, so that we'd be able to overdub and finish the record. We are not in possession of those."

Asked what would it take for Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd to get access to the tapes, Thayil replied: "We don't know. We've asked nicely, we've suggested that this will benefit all parties, if the band could just have these files, and we could finish the songs we were working on. But there seems to be some confusion amongst various parties as to what that would entail and how that works, and who that would benefit."

SOUNDGARDEN was working on a new studio album — the follow-up to 2012's "King Animal" — when Cornell committed suicide after a concert in Detroit in May 2017.

As for what the material sounds like, Thayil said: "Interestingly, there’s a psychedelic element... We had maybe a couple of sad songs, and a couple of heavy songs that in general feel were — where we were at in the writing process — kind of mixed like 'King Animal', but a little bit less of the heavy stuff. But it was still interesting, still quirky stuff."

Cornell was pronounced dead on May 18, 2017 after being found unresponsive in his Detroit hotel room. SOUNDGARDEN had played a show earlier that evening. The 52-year-old had sedatives and an anxiety drug in his system, but died as a result of hanging himself.

The three remaining members of SOUNDGARDEN, along with METALLICA, FOO FIGHTERS and members of AUDIOSLAVE, performed together for the first time since Cornell's death at a benefit concert honoring the singer on January 16 at the Forum in Los Angeles.