Soundgarden were working on new material at the time of Chris Cornell's death in 2017, and the surviving band members wish to complete those recordings featuring the late frontman's final contributions. But they're unable to do so, since the master files of Cornell's recordings are being withheld.

That's what lead guitarist Kim Thayil laid out for Music Radar Tuesday (July 23). Outlining the band's overdubbing process in the studio, he revealed the Soundgarden album's completion is currently out of the hands of himself or drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd, each of whom contributed to certain tracks already.

"Right now, that's all kind of stalled," he explained. "We tried to get this going two years ago, but we're not in possession of any of the demos that Chris was working on with them. We have copies of them, but what we need are the files, so that we'd be able to overdub and finish the record. We are not in possession of those."

Digging deeper, the Soundgarden co-founder exposed the confounding situation in the band's attempts to track down the recordings. However, he indicated other interests are preventing the exchange.

"We don't know," Thayil replied. "We've asked nicely, we've suggested that this will benefit all parties, if the band could just have these files, and we could finish the songs we were working on."

He continued, "But there seems to be some confusion amongst various parties as to what that would entail and how that works, and who that would benefit. And it's been tiring, you know. And we can't move on until some future date when someone realizes the value of allowing the creative partners to have access to the material."

Late last year, Thayil first hinted at the difficulty in obtaining the masters for Cornell's final Soundgarden tracks. Currently, the surviving band members are assembling an anniversary edition of Louder Than Love, and they hope to issue a compilation of early Screaming Life-era material at some point in the future.

This Friday (July 26), Soundgarden release Live from the Artists Den.