Tom Morello has given an update on the status of unheard music from Audioslave, the band he formed with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell.
The supergroup – which also included Morello’s fellow Rage Against The Machine musicians Tom Commerford and Brad Wilk – came together in 2001 and released three studio albums before separating in 2007.
Morello and Cornell did reunite for a one-off show in January 2017 at the ‘Anti-Inaugural Ball’ on the day of Donald Trump’s first inauguration as US President, but that came just four months before Cornell took his own life in May that year.
Morello teased in 2019 that there was “a record’s worth” of unreleased material from the Audioslave archives, and at the time, he said he believed all of that music would be released “at some point”. In the six intervening years, however, there have been no updates on the status of the recordings.
Now, he has provided an update in an interview with SNSMix. Explaining why they have never been released, he said: “It’s not for lack of anything other than that just we don’t have it together. There’s no plan to not put it out. I would love for it to get in the world and hopefully it will one day.”
“It’s not like here’s the 10 best jams,” he added. “Sometimes it’s like, someone likes this one, someone’s not feeling that one. So, we had from each of the three Audioslave records, we had songs left over, some of which are really great.”
In 2020, Cornell’s wife, Vicky, said that all previously material from her late husband would “see the light of day” eventually. “He’s alive that way and his legacy lives on,” she explained. “So it’s the most important thing to me, seeing how much people love him, miss him, respect him, and how much we want more of his music out there. So everything will be released.”
Just this week, Soundgarden issued an update on the status of their own new music featuring archive vocals from Cornell. They had been working on an album at the time of his death, and now drummer Matt Cameron has said they are “pretty close” to finishing it off and planning for its release.
In the months following Cornell’s death, Morello revealed that they had been discussing another Audioslave reunion before he passed, and also said he did not think he would ever recover from losing Cornell.
