Members of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Off! form side group

Members of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age and Off! have formed a new unnamed side project and have already recorded the basis for 10 songs.

The group is Soundgarden”s Ben Shepherd, Soundgarden/Pearl Jam”s Matt Cameron,  Off!”s Dimitri Coats, and Alain Johannes, best known for his work with QOTSA, Them Crooked Vultures, and Eleven.

Coats will be the primarily vocalist, he told Billboard, with Johannes also contributing vocals. The ad-hoc group has Facebook to thank for its formation. Coats says he sent Cameron a Facebook note complimenting him on his drumming and Cameron wrote back that he was a big Coats fan and told him about a side project that he, Shepherd and Johannes started in 2008. Coats mentioned he”d love to be part of it and shortly thereafter jointed the guys in Seattle and began laying down tracks.

” I think we”re all in situations in our band where we may not get to express ourselves fully the way we want to and this is an opportunity to let some of those other colors out in our songwriting,” said Coats, who describes the band”s music as “heavy and doomy…There”s some kind of heavy, bluesy moments and then there”s some really beautiful stuff too. It”s a little bit like ‘Superunknown,” that kind of era of Soundgarden, mixed with Alain”s kind of Stevie Wonder vibe.”

No release date is planned, nor does Coats know when the band will finish recording as Off!, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden are all on the road this summer.

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