In Defense Of...Audioslave - Self-Titled

In the remnants of the much-beloved, if extremely angry, Rage Against The Machine came a lot of hype for three of the band members' new project called Audioslave. This was to be the perfect merger of the 1990s two core rock sounds: the angry sound of Rage Against The Machine's music and the...uhh...angry sound of Chris Cornell's Soundgarden. In 2002, when their self-titled album was released on the hype of an amazing rock song called "Cochise", everyone expected that Cornell's introspective vocals with the Rage sound would lead to such amazing rock. Instead, they got a record that brought a ton of introspective content and only has a slight semblance to Rage.

I'll readily admit first off that I'd rather listen to Cornell's solo material or the Soundgarden material over Audioslave, and the same goes for Rage in comparison to Audioslave as well. Still, I'd argue that the first Audioslave album contains a nice balance of the hard rock material mixed in with the type of songs that Cornell felt represented his songwriting style. "Cochise" opens up the album with the musical equivalent of a sonic boom in that it's blistering and exhilarating. "Show Me How to Live" is more controlled in its noise, but it exposes the positives of Cornell versus former Rage vocalist Zach de la Rocha in that a "chill out" song never has to be uninteresting. Cornell is a more pure talent than de la Rocha, and a song like "Show Me How to Live" proves it.

Video for "Show Me How to Live".

And as misguided as the Cornell/Morello/Commerford/Wilk pairing showed itself to be on the mostly disappointing Out of Exile and Revelations, on the first record, they seemed to click from the onset. The album's first four tracks were the perfect blend of hard rock and tender vocals. The boys seemed made to actually last longer than five years and three albums. And even more "soft" ballads like "I Am The Highway" and "Shadow on the Sun" had their place, and was a better example of where the group truly could have worked than say "Doesn't Remind Me" from Out of Exile, a track where Cornell boasts that he stares at a lot of things because he's not reminded of anything at all. In turn, we're supposed to feel he's happy about not being depressed by his surroundings, but really...you get the point long before the four minutes are up. Whereas, "I Am The Highway" is more motivating about its message of not being used and doesn't march to an obvious point seconds into the song.

Not all of this album is great, of course. No modern rock record should ever go past one hour in length, and Audioslave reaches 65 minutes. Not to mention that I can barely point out anything of worth on the second half of Audioslave. Still, I find that this record doesn't try to bend to either direction of the spectrum. Cornell doesn't act like he's de la Rocha nor does he get into silly didactic politics, and the Rage guys realize that they don't have to go all out for every song. The tricks of Tom Morello had their place, but with no de la Rocha or the aforementioned didactic political content, neither he nor the rest of the band needed to sound exactly like their previous work. (To ramble on Morello, that's one thing that I appreciate about his stuff. Rage doesn't really sound like Audioslave and certainly neither of them sound like The Nightwatchman. But that point on Morello can be saved for another time.)

While yes, Audioslave did hit a brick wall in terms of direction and commercial success, the band at least has the good charm of that first album, a first album that maybe just deserves that second look.