Of all the singers to emerge from Seattle’s grunge scene, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell looked the least likely to sustain his stardom. His band — which broke up in 1997 — were huge, but never hip, and he lacked the poster-boy looks of Kurt Cobain and the charisma of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
Yet more than a decade on from Cobain’s death, Cornell is flying high as frontman with Audioslave, a quartet formed from the ashes of the thrash-rappers Rage Against the Machine. Few suspected that the strange pairing of the introspective singer and former Rage musicians would make much of a mark on the charts, but since the release of their eponymous debut album in 2002, Audioslave have become one of hard rock’s biggest, coolest bands.
Their history, of course, has a lot to do with it. The capacity crowd at the first of three consecutive shows at Brixton Academy contained few teenagers. Mostly, the fans were men and a surprisingly large contingent of women who had grown up with grunge. This was no middle-aged rock show, though. For almost two hours, Audioslave pummelled their audience with a powerful set of scorching songs that boasted squalling, chord-shredding solos from the gifted guitarist Tom Morello and howled vocals courtesy of Cornell.
Tracks from both Audioslave and the new second album, Out of Exile, fell into two categories. There were fast, noisy, effects-laden numbers such as Gasoline, The Worm and Show me How to Live, and more melodic, mid-tempo tunes Like a Stone and the current single Be Yourself, on which Cornell shone as a singer. He was also a surprisingly confident and entertaining frontman — he never stopped moving or flexing the muscles bulging from beneath his vest.
For the first time, classics from band members’ pasts were permitted and they made for the show’s most memorable moments. Soundgarden’s Outshined and a phenomenal rendition of Rage’s Sleep Now in the Fire — prefaced by an instrumental snippet of Bulls on Parade, during which Morello somehow made his guitar sound like a DJ scratching vinyl — sent the crowd crazy. Then came possibly the year’s best encore. Cornell played Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun solo on acoustic guitar and was almost drowned out by fans singing.
The rest of the band returned halfway through a magnificent I am the Highway, Cornell almost pulled off a cover of Rage’s Killing in the Name — the noise of the audience hid the fact that he can’t rap — and Audioslave’s debut hit Cochise ended the night in style.
Brixton Academy, June 22; Manchester Academy, June 24; T In The Park, July 9