Audioslave

In what was widely predicted to be a short-lived supergroup/side-project, Audioslave has instead gratifyingly yielded a bonafide band. The follow-up to their promising, if not quite artistically congealed '02 debut finds singer/songwriter Chris Cornell contributing a slate of songs that would have done his former Soundgarden proud, while guitarist Tom Morello and his former Rage Against the Machine bandmates cast them in a focused rhythmic groove that suggests that the old school can still yield a timely lesson or two. Cornell's best songs may still lurk in the shadows (the funeral hypno-blues of "Heaven's Dead," the martial metal of antiwar opener "Your Time Has Come," "The Worm" as anthem for self-loathing), yet they're now brightened with such surprisingly sunny fare as "Dandelion," "Doesn't Remind Me"'s charged, existentialist daydream and even a hook-rich, dangerously optimistic bac ...

2005-05-24 - Interscope Records