But now there's real reason to get your flannels in a knot: the rumor mill continues to spin that Cornell will be joining his buds for a full-on reunion.
In a recent interview with Kerrang! [via TwentyFourBit], Brent Smith of the band Shinedown dropped hints that he's heard the news, saying, "There's talk of a reuniting of Soundgarden in the States soon. I know actually someone specific who told me that, who is actually specifically in their organization. Kinda told me that they're talking about it." more

Chris Cornell told Rolling Stone that Soundgarden have been talking � not about touring or recording, but about the band's legacy. "The only thing that we have talked about is trying to put together an album of B sides and maybe a box set with some unreleased tracks we have," Cornell says. more

That's fair enough but Cornell then took it one step further: Gibson.com has a new interview with Chris Cornell, here is part of the intro and an excerpt where he discusses his aversion to reuniting with Soundgarden. Here you go: we finally got him on the phone, pulled out our extensive list of queries and got maybe three in before he went on a monologue that lasted nearly 30-minutes, at which point his publicist jumped on the line and said it was time for his next interview. What can we say, the guy is a pro.

Fortunately, Cornell touched on all the things we were dying to ask him about anyway, such as the miracle of Twitter, the backlash against the new album and the general horrors of touring. Sadly, he didn't offer any advice for our ongoing battle with frizzy hair.

Why playing Soundgarden's rocket-fueled metal on the reunion circuit doesn't appeal to him: "That, to me, is similar to playing the back of Chinese restaurant. My heart needs to feel good while I'm playing a song. In order to play old songs from my history, I need to be able to also play songs from the present and songs that will literally turn into the future in a moment's notice. That does work for me." - He goes on to explain why his much hated hip-pop solo album was a good idea - here