Soundgarden - Black Rain Video

Send "Black Rain" ringtone to your cell

"Black Rain" Video Review

"Black Rain" is a single by Seattle grunge heroes Soundgarden. Featuring lyrics written by frontman Chris Cornell and music written by bassist Ben Shepherd, the song was recorded during sessions for Badmotorfinger and, according to Chris Cornell in an interview with USA Today, "Black Rain" captures "that super heavy version (of the band) we were finally realizing to its fullest potential about 1991."

In a recent interview with Spin, bassist Ben Shepherd revealed that he's gone through a lot of struggles since Soundgarden had broken up, including being broke and without a place to live right now after a recent break up with a girlfriend. As for the period after Soundgarden broke up in the nineties, he went through big struggles.

"My whole life seemed over," he says. "Soundgarden broke up; my other band, Hater, broke up; my fiancee broke up with me; and then I broke three ribs. I got addicted to pain pills, drank a ton, and wound up OD'ing on morphine. I was laid out in my house for five days, and no one knew it. It was a fucking horrible time -- this total rock'n'roll cliché."

Soundgarden partnered up with Adult Swim's "Metalocalypse" to create the video, and more importantly, the Soundgarden characters for "Black Rain" putting together a kick-ass music video. It kind of resembles a mix of Saturday morning cartoons and the cult classic film "Heavy Metal."

"First off, Kim Thayil had a pretty strong idea of what he wanted," Small tells Spinner. "He had key words -- monsters; big, huge, wide shots; Dethklok; getting them in there somewhere, and Soundgarden. And then this idea of this gigantic robot that's going to fight the monsters, Dethklok screws something up, and it's up to Soundgarden to kind of fix and save their home city of Seattle that's been under attack by these outer space monsters."

Thayil is more modest though about his contributions, crediting the dialogue between the two for the video. "It was just a conversation he and I had and we exchanged some humorous insights into his TV show, 'Metalocalypse,' and pointing out the elements in the show that we thought were strong, which would be fun in an aesthetic sense," Thayil says. "There are some beautiful elements we thought we'd really like to use in the video and some humorous elements that we thought we'd incorporate in this video that comes in the form of giant translucent creatures."

By actually becoming a cartoon, does the band hope to earn some "cool points" from fans? "I don't know, but if you have kids you get a lot from them," Cornell says. "It's not on the same list as having Johnny Cash do a song you wrote, that's for sure, but there's definitely like a list of certain things you can possibly manage to pull off and that's one of them, I guess."

If the new video isn't enough to satiate fans, Cornell characterizes Soundgarden as an "active" band that's pondering some new tracks. "Here we are, all these years later and we're in a room and talking about new music and it doesn't feel like carrying a mountain up a hill," he says. "It seems like a completely natural idea and a natural fun thing to do, all the baggage that I think can sometimes come along with that we don't have it at all."

"Telephantasm" will be released on Sept. 28 in a bundle with the new "Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock" game, as well in three three expanded editions that feature vinyl copies, Soundgarden's first-ever DVD and five unreleased tracks. The single disc album will be available on its own beginning Oct. 5.

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