Soundgarden-"Live To Rise" Single

Hollywood Records, Inc.
2012


Back in the summer of 1990 I was turned onto Soundgarden by a girlfriend. The band's second studio album, "Louder Than Love" (which had been released in Sept. of 1989) became the soundtrack for my long nights working at Sea World (or Slave World as we liked to call it). Cleaning a park after hours can be a lonesome process, but somehow the sound of Chris and company made it easier to cope with. By the time "Badmotorfinger" came roaring out I had become a full-fledged fan. Three years after that Soundgarden became a household name thanks to "Superunknown" and, while the rest of the world was singing their praises, from that moment on I sort of lost interest. It wasn't because Soundgarden were suddenly huge. It was simply that the music I knew and loved had become lost. The band (for me at least) was no longer about riding this huge post-Black Sabbath riff. In a manner of speaking what rolled off the presses was something more akin to pop. Where was the band that penned such great tracks as "Get on the Snake", "Full on Kevin's Mom" and "Big Dumb Sex"? They were gone. Now, with the much hyped, and highly anticipated by my son and I, new Avengers Assemble movie due out May 4th we get one of the album's cuts in "Live To Rise". This was a free download off of Itunes otherwise I'm not so sure I would have picked it up. The movie's soundtrack is set to feature not only Soundgarden, but Shinedown, Rise Against, Bush, Evanescence, Five Finger Death Punch and a host of other alternative rock bands. For Soundgarden this is hyped as the first new material in 15 years. For later-day Soundgarden fans I fully expect a lot of horns in the air and full blown hard ons. For older fans of the group "Live To Die" will be more of the same alt-metal that plagued Soundgarden towards the end of their run. Ultimately it sounds like a soundtrack rock track which might be the worst thing about "Live To Die". There is just little to the song in terms of substance to set it apart. If you've heard other soundtracks from the past 10+ years that feature sets of alt-metal/radio metal material you already know what to expect. Soundgarden should have material stronger than this. The song does little to set it apart from radio-rock of the Foo Fighters which is just crazy if you consider just how good this band used to be. I'm sorry Soundgarden as I really wanted to like "Live To Rise". Instead it made me just go "Eh....".