Album Review

Soundgarden - Live on I-5Soundgarden – Live on I-5

Soundgarden are a band that needs absolutely no introduction at all. One of the biggest grunge rock bands in the world and finally they have released their first live album; it was originally meant to be released around 1997 but the band split up and the recordings were left in the studio. This now changes as in 2011 they have finally released their first live album.

Now there are really very few life albums I actually like; Killadelphia by Lamb of God being one and 9.0 Live by Slipknot being another. The best parts of live albums is you should be able to feel the atmosphere within an album with crowd interaction and its basically like reviewing a live show you should be able to feel it without being there. The 2 live albums I mentioned had that perfectly now this live album seems to be lacking in that department and unlike a fair few people I will not allow a bands legendary status to deter me away from what I’m actually hearing.

Apart from the crowd cheering at the start and finish of each song there’s not really anything else to it in terms of a live show. To be really honest I prefer the album versions of a fair few of these songs. There are some tracks that I do like on this live release though like “Rusty Cage” which was dedicated to the great Johnny Cash or the “Man in Black”. Other good songs on the album include “Helter Skelter” their Beatles cover played on the tour, “Search and Destroy” a cover of The Stooges, “Ty Cobb” and “Outshined” are all great songs.

However some of the tracks including my personal favourite “Black Hole Sun” don’t sound as good here as they do on record which is a load of crap. I’ve seen Chris Cornell live and perform “Black Whole Sun” and it was a thousand times better than that; I do think this furthers my point that you need to be at a gig to genuinely appreciate live music and this goes for a fair few of the tracks on this album.

What I think it is for me about this album is that I’m used to modern day live albums that are done digitally at 1 specific concert and captures all moments within the showers like the crowd interactions and everything else. Because this was done in the 90’s the technology back then and isn’t the same as modern day approaches to live music recording if they record a new one at a gig this year then I do think that would be a much better album.

3/5

Review by James Webb

 Band Members

Chris Cornell
Kim Thayil
Matt Cameron
Ben Shepherd
 Track Listing
1. Spoon Man
2. Searching With My Good Eye Closed
3. Let Me Drown
4. Head Down
5. Outshined
6. Rusty Cage
7. Burden in My Hand
8. Helter Skelter
9. Boot Camp
10. Nothing to Say
11. Slaves and Bulldozers
12. Dusty
13. Fell on Black Days
14. Search and Destroy
15. Ty Cobb
16. Black Hole Sun
17. Jesus Christ Pose
 Band Related Links
Soundgarden Myspace
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?