 
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
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