What were they thinking?

Seriously, what were Chris Cornell and Timbaland thinking when they started making this album? It's an interesting idea in theory, putting together a hip producer with one of the icons of Grunge rock. The result is terrible for the most part. Cornell's vocals sound completely disconnected from the music, as if the music and the vocals were recorded separately. Come to think of it, this is probably exactly what they did, both of them being such busy celebrities.

Most of the album sounds like Timbaland decided to make a remix album of Soundgarden's songs by completely ripping out the music and starting again, with fairly mediocre results. For the most part, it feels like Cornell's vocals have been dropped into another one of the innumerable hip hop albums Timbaland produces. There is no novelty here and certainly no glorious fusion of rock and hip-hop, it all very ho-hum.

It's not *all* doom and gloom. The partnership threatens to work on a few of the songs when they sound like an actual collaboration. That is why I'm giving it a rating of 4 and not 1. The title track and 'Long Gone' are two examples of this. Overall, this is such a waste of talent.

4/10