"Soundgarden — the heaviest hitters in grunge — are back together and hitting the road this summer. In addition to playing a series of headlining shows and festival dates in support of recent career retrospective Telephantasm, the band will also reconvene during the coming months to record their first new album since 1996’s Down On The Upside. [...]

STEREOGUM: So what is the status of things?

KIM THAYIL: We’re recording. We’re kind of doing it in stages. We have about 14 songs in various stages of completion. Previously, we’d just block out a bunch of time and go and track everything at once, but we can’t really do that right now. Matt has commitments to Pearl Jam, Chris has a solo tour happening and Soundgarden is touring in July. So we do the studio thing around those other engagements, which actually is turning out to be a lot better for us. It takes the pressure off in some ways. It’s not like, OK you’ve got three weeks and everything needs to get done in those three weeks. We can work at our own pace right night and take things one step at a time. We’re really enjoying it. We don’t have a record company or management pressuring us to hurry up, so we can really savor the process this time. " http://stereogum.com/733051/progress-report-soundgarden/franchises/progress-report/

tour dates: http://www.soundgardenworld.com/tour