SOUNDGARDEN's KIM THAYIL Talks About His Appreciation For Early METALLICA, EXODUS And METAL CHURCH

During an appearance on the Turned Out A Punk podcast, SOUNDGARDEN guitarist Kim Thayil, who is promoting his upcoming memoir, "A Screaming Life: Into The Superunknown With Soundgarden And Beyond", was asked if he and his bandmates were frustrated by the fact that they were "marketed into the metal world" alongside bands like METALLICA when they first signed to major label A&M in the late 1980s. Kim responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, we liked METALLICA, but that was different. The thrash scene kind of had — they crossed over with the punk scene very, very much so, and it was independent, and it wasn't as radio friendly or MTV oriented or pop oriented. We were already into METAL CHURCH, and I was acquainted with TROUBLE and EXODUS, so we had those records. As a atter of fact, it was Mark Arm, Mark from MUDHONEY — back then it was pre-GREEN RIVER, or around the time GREEN RIVER and SOUNDGARDEN started — it was Mark who turned me on to… He brought [METALLICA's debut album] 'Kill 'Em All' and [EXODUS's debut album] 'Bonded By Blood' over, and he's turning me on to this. I remember him saying, 'Listen how fast that is. That guitarist, he's only, like, 17.' [He was talking about] Kirk Hammett. And I remember it was Mark who — I don't know how his collection got so big, 'cause he wasn't DJing, but he turned me on to the TROUBLE albums and everything. So that aspect of metal was perfectly fine. On one hand you got this band that's definitely on the metal scene like TROUBLE, then you got this band coming out of the punk rock indie scene like SAINT VITUS. And they're both kind of doom oriented. And there's that element in what we're doing. There's definitely some stoner rock doom stuff that we impacted with that scene. We did a lot of different kinds of stuff."

Kim continued: "I think the problem was the major label maybe orienting things toward MTV. The people who work in major labels, they wanna get a little gold star on their lapel or their door, like, 'Hey, we helped break this band or make this...' They didn't quite understand that we weren't of that scene and we're this separate thing. And really it was NIRVANA's success that got that shit off of our back. Thank you, NIRVANA. And NIRVANA wasn't being promoted, 'cause everyone wanted to see what SOUNDGARDEN did. I tried to talk our A&R guys at A&M into signing NIRVANA. It's, like, 'Oh, we got this band. They're like our little brothers. They're coming up. They're amazing. The singer's great. Their songs are cool.' They're, like, 'Well, why do we wanna sign them when we already got you? We don't want two bands who are similar. And we wanna see what you guys do first before we...' I thought, 'Huh.' But they were very frank about that. It's, like, 'Well, we don't wanna sign NIRVANA' because we might compete with each other. We're kind of from the same scene... And they don't know what kind of success we may or may not have. But they knew what worked, and what worked was the stuff that was just the hugest thing in the world, and it was MTV and it was radio and it was that pop metal that, it had generally the glam look, so that was a way to sell it and package it, but the music was pretty much kind of pop with VAN HALEN guitar solos and fuzzy guitars. But if you take off the fuzzy guitars and the proficient tapping, you end up with basically pop songs, only pop songs about — I don't know — cars and strippers. Not that there's anything wrong with that — I'm sure there's cool stuff about cars and strippers — but the human experience does have a little bit more variety and depth to it. So that's the thing that bothered us, was people's inability and lack of insight or courage in taking risks in developing us as we were with an audience we'd already built through a number of tours in Europe and the U.S. on these indie labels. Why would you wanna steer us in the other direction? Oh, because it's lucrative and it's successful. And we did have — Chris [Cornell, SOUNDGARDEN singer] is very good-looking, statuesque, and he could easily be marketed that way. 'If he'd only do the spandex and heels and maybe put some blonde streaks in his hair and use some hairspray.' But it wasn't gonna happen. That wasn't what Chris was about, and it wasn't what the band was about. I think there probably was an interest in maybe doing that to help sell SOUNDGARDEN and break it. I do not doubt that there are probably some talks in the back rooms about, like, 'If we could just get another bass player and guitarist that was more willing to play that, then we could package this and this could be huge.' But fortunately, that didn't happen. We had a manager who championed us, and each of us were championing each other. But that was it. They wanted to market us alongside a band like METALLICA… By the way, before METALLICA got huge, you had success from FAITH NO MORE, and then the [RED HOT] CHILI PEPPERS started having success. BEASTIE BOYS' 'Licensed To Ill' was double platinum really quickly. So the labels were kind of looking around trying to figure out where to put their feet, and there may have been money in that pop metal thing, but there was other stuff happening. You had independent hip-hop labels that had platinum records, and you had some independent metal records, labels that were selling bands like METALLICA and MEGADETH. And you had SST, which with the success of HÜSKER DÜ and MINUTEMEN and a lot of their bands, SST became a really powerful and wealthy label themselves. And this is all money that's not going into the major label coffers. And I think they were aware of that. They ignored rap and punk and thrash for a long enough time that a good percentage of that record industry entertainment dollar was not going their way."

"A Screaming Life: Into The Superunknown With Soundgarden And Beyond" will arrive on June 9, 2026 via HarperCollins imprint William Morrow.

SOUNDGARDEN is working on an album of previously unreleased recordings they made with Cornell before the singer's 2017 death. Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd are collaborating with producer Terry Date, who previously helmed SOUNDGARDEN's "Louder Than Love" (1989) and "Badmotorfinger" (1991) LPs.

In November 2025, SOUNDGARDEN joined the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame class of 2025 in the Performer category. The Seattle grunge legends were first nominated for the Rock Hall in 2020, and were on the ballot again in 2023 before finally being chosen for induction last year.

Thayil, Cameron, Cornell and Shepherd were included in the induction, as was original bassist Hiro Yamamoto, who was with SOUNDGARDEN from 1984 to 1989 and played on the band's first two EPs and first two albums.

SOUNDGARDEN's three surviving members performed during the event, alongside guest vocalists Taylor Momsen and Brandi Carlile in place of Cornell. The set also featured appearances by PEARL JAM's Mike McCready and ALICE IN CHAINS' Jerry Cantrell.