Soundgarden at Shepherd's Bush Empire

Soundgarden
Shepherd's Bush Empire, 9 November 2012

About 17 years ago my brother and I, along with my two best friends, won tickets to see Soundgarden play the first concert at the newly re-opened Shepherd's Bush Empire. Before it had been a theatre and the set of Wogan's daily TV chat show but this was the first time it was being used as a music venue. Our seats were way up in the gods but damn, were we excited. I had seen Soundgarden before and at smaller venues but this was the first time they had returned to these shores since becoming one of the big grunge four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains were the other three) and it was just before their huge breakthrough album, Superunknown, was released. I remember Artis The Spoonman, the man they had named the first single from the album for, coming on and playing a short support and then watching the tops of the band's heads as they treated us to songs we hadn't heard before from the forthcoming album as well as old favourites.

All these years on and here we are at the same venue with the reunited band about to preview songs from their brand new forthcoming album, King Animal. Rather nicely Chris Cornell mentions this fact straight away, although either jokingly or showing his terrible maths skills, he keeps saying it was 25 years ago, and then asks if anyone had been at that show back in the 90s. A few of us do raise our hands, but Cornell laughs ignoring us and saying "I thought not. None of you are old enough!". It's true there are a lot of youngsters in audience who probably don't even remember when Soundgarden split up in the mid 90s but there are a lot of older folk too, many older than me who have probably been following the band since they started in the 80s. Still none of those audience members look as good as the band who are all nearing 50 (apart from guitarist Kim Thayil who is actually 52), particularly Cornell, who, with his hair long and flowing again, looks a good decade younger than his actual age and is still as energetic as ever, while the voice is as amazing and agile as it was all those years ago when I first saw him.

Starting off with the new single, Been Away Too Long, surprisingly they then seemed to forgo the new album in favour of old favourites such as My Wave, Let Me Drown and Spoonman (which he told us they had opened the 1994 Shepherd's Bush Empire show with), going right back to Hunted Down and Flower. There was also a surprise outing for the heavy, Sabbathesque Incessant Mace from their debut album, Ultramega OK, the first time they've played in live since 1995 apparently and it sounded glorious.

Even though it was great to hear all the old songs I loved so much, particularly from Badmotorfinger, for a while I thought this show appeared to be almost a retread of the Hyde Park gig I went to this summer (remember, in the pouring rain but completely worth it!), where they essentially played a nostalgia set concentrating on songs from Badmotorfinger and Superunknown (I don't know why Down On The Upside always gets such short shift, it's a fantastic record, even tonight they only play Blow Up The Outside World from it). But then about half way through they debutted some new tracks from King Animal starting with a song called Black Saturday with Chris on acoustic guitar but still backed with a heavy sludgey guitar and bass courtesy of Kim and Ben Shepherd. Hearing songs for the first time live, particularly while standing up front and incredibly loud, may not be the best way to judge them and the few they did play did kind of blend into each other but one in particular, a real riff-laden song called Eyelid's Mouth really stood out and went into a Krautrock style ending as Kim and Chris got into a heavy groove at the end.

While the rest of the band was as silent as ever Cornell was the most talkative I've ever seen him and completely at ease with chatting between songs and even some banter with the audience. The most amusing part came with a big tongue-in-cheek rant about the fact iTunes had put up a photo of them in front of a cut-out of the album cover and, according to him, it looked really lame, which provided a big laugh. He also walked over to the audience a lot, jumping down to the barrier and shaking people’s hands. I almost thought for one moment he was going to crowd surf just like the old days but alas he remained sensible. There was a great conversation with a guy in the audience who caught his eye because he looked really high which Chris found amusing. Finding out he was from Tel Aviv, he teased him by feigning horror and asking “Did you bring drugs into this country?”

But my favourite member of Soundgarden has always been guitarist Kim Thayil and fortunately I was stood in front of the bearded guitar god all night. As cool and detached as ever, at one point everyone started chanting “Kim! Kim! Kim!” and he barely acknowledged it, eventually giving just a little nod so everyone would stop. Chris laughed and encouraged everyone to carry on  because Kim found it embarrassing, bless him. Obviously Ben Shepherd was as fierce and scary as ever: he now looks like a beast with his big beard and quiffed, Elvis-hair as well as sounding like one and Matt Cameron still has his crown as one of the best drummers in rock, it was amazing to just watch him.

After a double whammy of two of their most beloved songs, Rusty Cage and Outshined, they ended the main set with two more new numbers, Attrition and Rowling, which was a mistake because even though they didn't sound too bad they did leave things on rather a confused note instead of the high that an old favourite would bring. Thankfully they soon returned and after another new track (Worse Dreams) they ended things in style with The Day I Tried To Live, Black Hole Sun (which of course went down a storm) and Slaves & Bulldozers, which sounded good although not as epic and mesmerising as the performance at Hyde Park. At the end Kim and Ben remained on the stage causing massive amounts of feedback and it was so loud I actually felt my insides vibrating, which wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling. 

So, all in all, definitely great to have them back and they without a doubt still have the goods but I can't wait to hear these new songs after becoming more familiar with the new album. Hopefully that won't be too long coming.