Audioslave

The Arc of Audioslave

The pivots — what forced Audioslave to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Rick Rubin Sessions

   Rubin dragged the band into the studio after Cornell briefly quit during the early rehearsals, forcing them to focus on heavy, fundamental grooves rather than technical showmanship. They recorded twenty-one songs in nineteen days, a pace that kept the arrangements lean and stripped of the over-produced clutter that killed other bands in 2002. You hear it in the self-titled record’s massive, cavernous drum sound and the lack of layered guitar overdubs. It was a document of a band figuring out how to play with a singer who actually wanted to use a melody.

2. 02

   The Havana Pivot

   By the time Out of Exile rolled around in 2005, the band was chasing a more soulful, classic rock identity that culminated in them becoming the first U.S. rock act to play a free outdoor show in Cuba. Producer Brendan O’Brien came in to tighten the screws, shifting the focus away from the debut’s heavy stomp toward a more expansive, psychedelic radio-rock sound. This era saw Cornell finding his footing as a songwriter within the group, trading the abstract poetry for more direct, emotional hooks. The record topped the charts, but the tension between Morello’s funk-metal roots and Cornell’s folk-singer soul started to show through the cracks.

3. 03

   The Revelations Burnout

   The final studio turn saw the band leaning hard into 60s soul and R&B influences, a weird direction that felt like a compromise nobody was fully happy with. Recording in Los Angeles with O'Brien again, they tried to inject some Sly and the Family Stone grit into the mix, but the momentum was dead because Cornell was already mentally back in Soundgarden and the Rage guys were looking at Coachella reunion checks. The album has some of Morello's most inventive soloing, but the songwriting felt like a band running on fumes. They didn't even tour for it before the press release hit that Cornell was gone for good.