The 12 year break is over & school is back in session. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!

So said Chris Cornell’s first Twitter message for 2010. Yes! As of midnight on January 1st, 2010, the vocalist extraordinaire announced the long awaited reunion of Soundgarden – the Seattle based grunge act, which was one of the pioneering bands to lay out the master plans for the genre, even before bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam hit the commercial stream.

“The Knights of the Soundtable” had been strongly hinting at a reunion throughout 2009. During Tom Morello’s (Rage Against the Machine and ex-Audioslave) justice tour, the whole band – Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd and Matt Cameron - except for Cornell had a jam onstage, featuring vocalist Tad Doyle as Cornell’s replacement-for-a-jam. And now since they are “riding again” together, it seems like grunge fans out there have the most incredible ear-candy to start off twenty-ten.

Soundgarden’s current lineup includes Chris Cornell on vocals, Kim Thayil on guitars, Matt Cameron on drums, and Ben Shepherd on bass.

Since the split of Soundgarden in 1997, Cornell has released three solo albums and three more with the now-defunct Audioslave. And anyone who had followed Chris Cornell’s solo projects (trust us, it’s not that hard following a rockstar, even when he’s intentionally trying to keep a low profile – especially when he’s got four octaves up his sleeve) in our opinion have been a sinful let down comparably to the Audioslave material. But oh joy! He’s back with Soundgarden – something that we can actually review here at The Backdoor and feel good about doing.

No further announcements have been made till this point from any of the band members after the Jan 1st official announcement. But the fact that 100th best Guitarist according to Rolling Stone – Kim Thayil, the Drummer Matt Cameron of the band Allmusic calls “the most popular American rock & roll band of the ’90s” – Pearl Jam, and bassist Ben Shepherd who had been with Soundgarden since 1990, with a guy who can mesmerize (understatement, of course) audiences with his vocal belting – Chris Cornell, gives much hope for the reunion of this awesome (again – understatement) band.

Thayil and Shepherd had already expressed their interest to come out with a boxed set of unreleased material and a set of B-sides. But with Cameron’s previous commitments with Pearl Jam, we don’t know how it would turn out for them getting their new material sorted out. We only hope that all this hype is not just some people mucking around with their wishful thinking. So yes, with much vim and vigor in the spirit of Rock ‘n’ Roll, we’re hopeful.

To see how it all unfolds, register yourselves at Soundgraden World – the new website which promises to keep you upto date with the band’s happenings. And also, they’ve released a new video of their 1989 track “Get on the snake” to mark the reunion. And if you’re not the typical Soundgarden fan, we recommend you listen to one of our personal favorites out of their catalog – “Black hole Sun” – which won  two grammys back in 1995.

“Steal the rhythm while you can” – Spoonman (Soundgarden – 1994)