10 Late Career Bangers From Huge Rock Bands

Rest in power, Chris Cornell.

He had the greatest voice in rock music since Robert Plant and remains an underrated artist in a genre that deifies monsters.

Soundgarden reformed, after thirteen years apart, in 2010. Two years later they released their comeback album, King Animal and it was like they’d never been away. But before that record’s November 2012 release, there was the small matter of them putting out an unrelated single, attached as it was, to the biggest blockbuster movie of the year.

The movie was The Avengers, and it fared quite well; the single was Live To Rise, and it has, unfortunately, been somewhat lost to time. Perhaps it’s because Soundgarden didn’t really do that kind of thing; attach their music to big summer movies, or perhaps it was because nobody not named James Bond really did that kind of thing anymore in 2012. Cornell, of course, had form after scoring the Casino Royale theme six years earlier, nevertheless, the big rock song attached to the big movie had faded away by then.

Or, perhaps, it was that the song sounds more like a Cornell solo song than a Soundgarden track, favouring the epic chorus over the Zeppelin-esque riffage.

Whatever the reason, the song’s “phoenix from the flames” subject matter make it a touching tribute to a man whose music deserves to be remembered.