Soundgarden kicked off their reunion tour in Toronto on Saturday night, 14 years after a tense breakup.
The rockers, who rose to fame during the ‘90s grunge period in music with hits including “Black Hole Sun,” broke up in 1997 after a lengthy period of internal conflict.
“Welcome to the first show of the first tour in 13, 14 years,” frontman Chris Cornell told the crowd at the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre, according to the Toronto Sun (the reunited band first played a couple of shows last year).
The group performed 21 songs over two hours, with Cornell even shooting video of the audience during the show.
So what did the critics have to say?
The Sun’s Jane Stevenson wrote that Cornell’s voice was in fine form, as was the rest of the group, which “played on a fairly stripped down stage save for an impressive lighting rig and the occasional video backdrop and let the music do most of the talking.”
She said the group didn’t put on “an all-out love-fest” but Cornell “seemed pretty happy for a guy who told yours truly four years ago of a Soundgarden reunion: ‘I just don’t see the scenario where it made sense.’”
She mostly gave the show high marks with the exception of one quibble.
“If there was any disappointment on Saturday night, it was that Soundgarden’s choice of songs seemed to fall into two categories -- either incredibly good or largely forgettable,” she wrote.
Half of the 12 tunes from that album's predecessor, 1991's "Badmotorfinger," were also dusted off, including the speed-metal track "Rusty Cage" that Johnny Cash later revived in a stripped-down version.
Just two songs were played from "Down on the Upside," an album at the center of a rift about musical direction. Rising tensions led to Soundgarden's break-up after the final stop of its 1997 tour in Hawaii.
Only Cornell and Cameron retained high public profiles in subsequent years. The singer released a few solo albums and formed the "supergroup" Audioslave with members of Rage Against the Machine. Cameron became Pearl Jam's fifth drummer.
But guitarist Kim Thayil told Reuters in May that the foursome managed to remain friends, with the musicians often bumping into each other in Seattle's tight-knit music scene.
The reunion started to come together last year, with the band playing the Lollapalooza festival in August, and a handful of low-profile dates in small venues.
The group, rounded out by bassist Ben Shepherd, is taking the current reunion on a day-to-day basis, given that the members are older, wiser and have domestic commitments.
"The band is definitely handling its career situation in a lot freer way than it did before," Thayil said. "There are other focal points to people's lives individually and those can't be taken away. First things first.
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