Say Hello 2 Heaven
Reach Down
Hunger Strike
Pushin Forward Back
Call Me a Dog
Times of Trouble
Wooden Jesus
Your Saviour
Four Walled World
All Night Thing
Having long since passed into legend, 1991’s Temple Of The Dog is a rare beast indeed, a genuine rock’n’roll unicorn. An album with its genesis rooted in tragedy – the heroin-overdose death of Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood – its original 10 tracks were a kind of catharsis through music.
Wood’s close friend Chris Cornell wrote two tracks to begin with, Say Hello 2 Heaven and Reach Down, before the tribute turned into a full album with Mother Love Bone’s Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron and Eddie Vedder all contributing.
Recorded with no commercial expectations over a handful of weekends at the end of 1990, it’s music made purely for the sake of it – stress-free and simple. It captured a nascent Pearl Jam before Ten shot them to stardom, and before Soundgarden went stratospheric with Badmotorfinger, and still represents some of the finest music those bands ever recorded.
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
Other albums released in April 1991
- Arise - Sepultura
- Mama Said - Lenny Kravitz
- Mane Attraction - White Lion
- Word of Mouth - Mike + The Mechanics
- Flashpoint - The Rolling Stones
- Real Life - Simple Minds
- The Ghosts That Haunt Me - Crash Test Dummies
- True Love - Pat Benatar
- Brotherhood - The Doobie Brothers
- The Way to Salvation - King Missile
- Flyin' the Flannel - Firehose
- Kinky - Hoodoo Gurus
- Ordinary Average Guy - Joe Walsh
- Union - Yes
- The Drill - Wire
- The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill - The Young Gods
What they said...
"There's a very loose, jam-oriented feel to much of the album, and while it definitely meanders at times, the result is a more immediate emotional impact. The album's strength is its mournful, elegiac ballads, but thanks to the band's spontaneous creative energy and appropriately warm sound, it's permeated by a definite, life-affirming aura." (AllMusic)
"Singer Chris Cornell’s lyrics remain as annoyingly oblique as they are with Soundgarden, but don’t worry. Just sit back and revel in the whomping guitars of Mike McCready and Love Bone member Stone Gossard as they mesh with the imaginative pummeling of Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron – the untamed side of the much-hyped Seattle sound, in all its wailing glory." (Entertainment Weekly)
"Soundgarden’s singer turns in a revelatory vocal performance, locating a vein of urgency and warmth in the steeliness of his plangent, preternaturally high voice. When he soars even higher than high without losing a trace of clarity and control near the end of Say Hello to Heaven, he demonstrates how to summon and free the most difficult emotions." (Los Angeles Times)
What you said...
Chris Downie: Whether it's viewed as an epitaph for Andrew Wood, or a one-off, all-stars grunge classic, there is undoubtedly an aura of sadness that looms over this one. Mother Love Bone were arguably the band who bridged the gap between the glam-tinged hard rock of the 80's and the alternative boom that subsequently wiped it out, but his untimely succumbing to drugs ended what could have been a.great career.
Any will know this band due to the timeless Hunger Strike and there's no denying it's enduring quality, but this is an album that deserves to be listened to and appreciated as a whole. A unique album that was borne out of tragic circumstances, yet shines bright as ever over 30 years later. 9/10.
Jamie Laszlo: One of my favorite albums of all time.
Ben Smith: Its a perfect 10.
Scott Parnell: An absolute belter!
Brian Carr: As I listened to this week’s album, I was in a rather contemplative mood. Although I’ve loved Temple of the Dog since its release, I don’t know the last time I listened to it in its entirety. That made me wonder if I’m a musical weirdo. In that I mean that so many people have their favourite songs/artists/albums that they listen to repeatedly, while I feel like I spend much of my time in discovery mode, looking for something new (or new to me) or at least unexpected tunes I haven’t heard in a long time. So as time goes on, I just don’t seem to have much that gets repeated listens.
The plus side of this is that I was able to listen to Temple Of The Dog with fresh ears, relatively unaffected by my prior opinions, with the added bonus of being able to put the album in its historical context.
Like many others, I assume, I found Temple of the Dog thanks to the ubiquity of Hunger Strike. I may have heard some small part of the band/album’s backstory but hadn’t yet found the spectacular glory of Mother Love Bone. The riffs, songwriting and melodic nature of the tunes were more than enough for this 80s music lover to dig into. Hunger Strike was the gateway to much stronger (in my opinion) tracks like Say Hello 2 Heaven, Call Me a Dog and Times of Trouble, and for heavier moods, Reach Down and Pushin Forward Back rock very well. Listening today, the record does seem to lose a little steam as it goes along, but it’s still a spectacular showcase of some of the stellar musical talents from the Seattle scene that experienced far too many premature deaths over the years.
John Davidson: Melodic and melancholy this album was birthed as a sort of musical wake for Andrew Wood (ex of Mother Love Bone), but it also sets the template for Pearl Jam's first few albums and offers an early glimpse of Chris Cornell's gentler introspective side as he worked through his grief for a friend.
If I had sought this out back in 1994/95 when I was rocking out to Ten and Superunknown it might have been one of my favourite albums but 30 years on I find it difficult connect with.
Not that its a bad album, far from it, but it is relentlessly of its time and waves a mournful flag remorselessly. That said, it is hauntingly beautiful. 8/10.
Top tracks - Hunger Strike, Times of Trouble and Reach Down (if only for that McCready guitar lead)
"You gotta hold on to your time and break through these times of Trouble" - If only Chris Cornell had been able to follow his own advice.
Greg Schwepe: Quick review this week of a decent, listenable album from an assortment of grunge rock all-stars. A nice revisit as I hadn’t listened to this since my “Great Cassette Purge” sometime in the middle 90’s. This one unfortunately did not make the transition to CD!
Basically, if you’re a fan of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam; you’re gonna like this. This was played on the local alternative station (left of the dial, as they say) and I bought it on the strength of Hunger Strike itself.
After Say Hello 2 Heaven kicks this party off, we get the swampy, groovy riff of Reach Down. Riff, repeat, riff, repeat. Superb. But, as I listened…and listened, I wondered “Gee, how long is this song?” And a quick check shows just a little north of 11 minutes! Great song, but they could have got the same effect if they capped it at 6 minutes.
Which leads me to what drew me to this album in the first place; Hunger Strike. The arpeggiated guitar intro slowly draws you in. Eddie Vedder joins Chris Cornell on this one. Then at about 2 and a half minutes the vibe gets a little grittier. The vocal interplay between Vedder and Cornell really makes this song. And my only complaint is that it’s not longer! Where Reach Down could benefit from being a little shorter, Hunger Strike could have been a few minutes longer as I would’ve like to heard more refrains in the choruses. Again, those vocals!
And overall, Chris Cornell shows why he was one of the premier vocalists of his era. Wow. And the irony is that this album was put together in memory of a fallen musical comrade, and then Cornell later left this Earth way before his expiration date. Sad.
Overall, great one-off album from this band. 8 out of 10 on this one for me.
Adam McCann: Simply put, hauntingly beautiful. A 70s groove through a 90s lens. Cornell's voice is superb throughout and showed a versatility which we hadn't really seen in Soundgarden yet. The same can be said of Mother Love Bone and Green River with a superb performance from a then unknown Mike McCready with his Hendrix flair.
Philip Qvist: Some might say this is a Pearl Jam album before Pearl Jam became famous, but for me this is more of a great Chris Cornell record before he too became famous; with Mother Love Bone as the backing band.
Whatever the case, it is a great tribute album to Andrew Wood; and it is definitely an album from the grunge era that everyone should listen to at least once in their lifetime.
My star of the show is lead guitarist Mike McCready - especially on the 11-minute epic Reach Down. That song, along with Hunger Strike, are my highlights of Temple Of The Dog, but in fairness all the songs are quality. A 9 from me.
Wesley Winegarden: A stone cold grunge classic
Hugo Cortés: Nothing to say. It's just one of the greatest.
Mike Canoe: A musical eulogy to a fallen friend done in by his own hand doesn't sound like the most cheery way to spend an hour but Temple Of The Dog surprised me then and it still surprises me more than 30 years later. The album is sad, of course, but it’s also cathartic and strangely euphoric.
I was already a fan of Chris Cornell thanks to Soundgarden but Temple Of The Dog sealed the deal as far as me considering him the greatest living singer of this new alternative rock. His voice had an unrivalled power and the ability to wring emotion out of every syllable.
Truth be told, I resented Eddie Vedder and the rest of the musicians (minus Matt Cameron, obviously) for a long time because the resulting band, Pearl Jam, overshadowed both Temple of the Dog and Soundgarden. Stinkin' thinkin' but music allegiances run deep. Now I hear how amazing Mike McCready is on guitar throughout and how Vedder's voice really does pair perfectly with Cornell's on Hunger Strike.
In fact, the first half of the album is pretty much perfect. Once I saw this week’s pick, I realised I could still recall the melody of the first six songs and All Night Thing, the beautiful and hopeful closing track. That and the haunting Times Of Trouble are my current favorites but the whole album remains remarkably solid.
The most heartbreaking thing for me about the album now is that the sadness of its creation is compounded by Chris Cornell’s suicide in 2017. Whatever Cornell had in him that led to an ultimately hopeful tribute to his friend sadly wasn’t there for him when he needed it most.
Final score: 8.87 (53 votes cast, total score 470)
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