By Navjot Kaur Sobti

“I think getting back together would take the lid off…and possibly change what to me [seemed] like the perfect lifespan [for] the band. I can’t think of any reason to mess with that.”

The above would be a short extract of Cornell’s statement just a good three years ago, post the disbanding of Seattle-based Soundgarden. From a group that had coalesced from the tiny bits and pieces of the Shemps, a.k.a. the cover band they first formed as, they treaded musical grounds much vaster than your average radio single popper (let alone local cover band). Taking shape within the movement and subculture of grunge as it were, the band graced fans with the psychedelic-meets-metal canvas of Ultramega OK and the equally somber compositions on Superunknown. “They came, they saw, they conquered:” a cliché adage that would wrap up the career path of these cats pretty well, until that sad day when the band parted ways and the craptastic tunes otherwise known as Chris Cornell’s solo work began to fill the airwaves.

Years passed, and Soundgarden’s singles slowly climbed the billboards; little did I know, two years old at the time and observing the inverted colors and trippy camera work of “Jesus Christ Pose” on my television screen, that this band would become a sonic staple in my own life. Come middle-school, when I grew out of the manufactured auditory garbage otherwise known as Linkin Park, I began to confide in such introspective, Cornellian lyrics as, “down in the hole, Jesus tried to crack a smile / beneath another shovel load.”

The emotional connection with music that bands like Soundgarden fostered in me only catalyzed my ascent into the world of heavy metal. What’s more was my frustration that I’d picked up Superunknown a bit too late, that I’d been born in the wrong decade: discovering the band so late as to merely be able to catch Chris Cornell live, solo (a snippet off of the original package: yes, the original package – Soundgarden – who’d been playing the stages of NYC while I was twiddling my thumbs, frying a few dozen neurons in an SAT exam room, circa spring 2006…That horrible day when the band decided that they, as so eloquently described by Cornell, had reached their last creative half-life.)

All of this seemingly melodramatic textual buildup, for me to happily type into this Microsoft word screen that Soundgarden has reunited. So, least to say that my regrets of my late conception, prolonged exposure to crappy pop music, etc., all significantly abated.

So, for now, I’m going to flip off my skepticism (of the members’ old ages and Chris’ recent musical track record) to rejoice in this.