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Dec 10, 201280In an era when so many classic bands return to tout but without risking new material, it's a delight to have Soundgarden take that gamble and win. [17 Nov 2012, p.52]
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Nov 21, 201280A mighty result. [Dec 2012, p.84]
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Nov 15, 201280Other than 'Been Away Too Long' there are no obvious singles here. Rather, each track takes on a propulsive and seductive weight far greater than the sum of its parts when listened to in succession.
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Nov 15, 201280King Animal doesn't sound like a nostalgia-fed cash grab, nor is it poisoned by the desperate commercialism of Cornell's post-Soundgarden projects.
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Nov 14, 201280This is a surprisingly strong reunion, one that puts the band back on the track they abandoned long ago.
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Nov 12, 201280Soundgarden doesn't advance beyond reclaiming its proven strengths on King Animal, but those strengths are substantial.
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Nov 8, 201280Their first new album since 1996 makes a surprisingly good fist of plugging back into the sound that made them the moodiest and heaviest of the Seattle grunge bands.
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Nov 8, 201280King Animal undeniably draws its strength from the band's accessible Superunknown era, but also takes Soundgarden somewhere fresh.
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Nov 8, 201275[Skip tepid "Been Away Too Long"] to the latter half, home of the Stonesian psych flourishes ("Attrition")and a bluesy power ballad. [9/16 Nov 2012, p.98]
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Nov 8, 201275On the whole, King Animal is a welcome return, and though it doesn't reinvent the wheel, it reminds us why these guys were considered the architects of the Seattle scene.
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Dec 21, 201270King Animal bucks the trend by being reasonably good. It is unquestionably a Soundgarden album, and far better than anyone had a right to expect.
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Dec 11, 201270A welcome return. [Jan 2013, p.81]
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Nov 29, 201270King Animal doesn't hit as hard as their really early material, but it's well-paced.
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Nov 21, 201270Whilst this beast will satisfy the ravenous converted, skeptics are set to remain agnostic.
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Nov 16, 201270Soundgarden made an album here, with all sorts of internal connections and deliberate emotional ebbs and flows.
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Nov 13, 201270As an album King Animal remains a somewhat numbing listen, its components, as excellent as they individually often are, making for a rather wearing collective, undeniably muscular but curiously unmemorable.
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Nov 13, 201270While this record lacks the canonizing tracks like "Jesus Christ Pose," "Black Hole Sun," "Spoonman" and "Burden in My Hand," Soundgarden deserves to be commended for recapturing the feeling of grunge and reintroducing it today.
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Nov 13, 201270It's that old-time sludge that carries him home.
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Nov 8, 201270It's right in line with the band's natural progression; so much so that it's almost difficult to believe it didn't come out a decade ago.
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Nov 13, 201267It's neither a trainwreck nor a masterpiece, but it stirs the senses in all the right ways.
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Dec 4, 201265A backhanded compliment, sure, but really--things could have been so much worse. [No. 93, p.61]
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Dec 10, 201260The album is less a triumphant return than an example of what happens to most middle-aged rock bands: They've returned as a slightly more conservative version of what made them famous in the first place.
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Nov 27, 201260There's nothing bad about these 13 tracks, but nothing remarkable either.
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Nov 21, 201260The rest of King Animal struggles to match "Been Away Too Long" for musical flair or raw energy. [Dec 2012, p.113]
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Nov 16, 201260Soundgarden pivots and parries as usual, but a better sense of dynamics is much needed to make the performances truly pop.
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Nov 13, 201260All those years in Audioslave have smoothed Cornell's appealingly rough edges, and as grand as King Animal occasionally sounds, it lumbers when it should roar.
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Nov 12, 201260Production issues aside, this record proves that Soundgarden still have their muscle but also hints that they are in the process of figuring out how to flex it again.
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Nov 8, 201260The energy level Soundgarden maintains is certainly admirable for a band whose members are all hovering around 50 years old, but this fairly narrow focus on capital-R Rock songs and little of anything else results in a homogeneity that keeps it from offering the level of depth or surprises that the band's previous albums held.
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Nov 16, 201259The group's first album since 1996 just sounds like the one they would've churned out in 1998.
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Nov 12, 201250They sound more like singer-songwriter leftovers from his solo albums than the stuff of which big rock-band comebacks are made.
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Nov 8, 201250King Animal would have been better had it foregone the regal pretensions and just stuck to being a feral beast. There was clearly the makings of a decent album here, but somewhere along the line it's all gone wrong.
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Nov 15, 201240Soundgarden's best material conjures a dense atmosphere of gloom that renders Cornell's angsty lyrics portentous and significant. But few of the songs on King Animal evoke much of anything in the way of feeling.
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10Oh hell.. It IS soungarden............................................................................................................................