Temple Of The Dog - Temple Of The Dog > Reviews > Classic Grunge Collaboration

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Outstanding
Value for Money

Advantages:	best of both bands
Disadvantages:	one - off album, Soundgarden are no more

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

During the winter of 1990 just prior to Pearl Jam bursting out into the world, the ultimate grunge album was being created in Seattle. Band members from both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were making beautiful music together as a therapy to overcome the death of their close friend, Andrew Wood. Andrew was the lead singer of Mother Love Bone (Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament’s previous band before Pearl Jam) who had recently died of an overdose. Chris Cornell was Wood’s flatmate at the time and became the instigator of creating the songs in tribute to the singer.

The result is an absolutely breathtaking album combining everyone’s supreme talents. The majority of the music and lyrics were penned by Cornell and the first 2 tracks, ‘Say Hello 2 Heaven’ and ‘Reach Down’ were written for Andrew, from that Chris, Stone, Jeff, Mike McCready and Matt Cameron recorded the songs. Both songs are played with raw emotion illustrating the sadness of his death,”he came from an Island, and he died from the street”. The intensity and power of Cornell’s voice throughout the album is truly amazing, this combined with the music and the spine-tingling guitar solos – no words can describe it! The other 8 songs were created together spontaneously as a mega jammin’ session without record company pressure – they made it for themselves.

On an album so amazing, it’s hard to have favourites but one I would have to mention is ‘Hunger Strike’. This features additional vocals from the one and only Eddie Vedder. He had only recently come together with the others and sang with Chris. The song is filled with emotion and brings out the listener in goosebumps.

‘Times of Trouble’ was written by Stone and lyrics by Chris but for the mega Pearl Jam fans out there the song was also given to Vedder who wrote his own lyrics which became,’Footsteps’, same music, different song, both outstanding!!

Each song is equally beautiful, emotionally intense, or all out rocking grunge style at its best. The singing and guitar sounds really are shockingly brilliant.

The magic produced by 2 great bands at a time of sadness has created the ultimate classic combination which will be appreciated for a long long time. The only sadness we have now is the loss of Soundgarden as a band but listening to Temple of the Dog is a great reminder of both bands together at their best!