This thought sticks like an aftertaste to my senses after ‘Live from the Artists Den’ – the SOUNDGARDEN concert movie shown at a small number of IMAX venues across the world on July 1st, which will come out on DVD and Blu-Ray later in the month. Under the surface of the brilliant sound, the tight performance and the catchy songs – many of which have been rock radio staples for a long time – there’s bubbling aggression, darkness, intentional complexity and an anti-pop aesthetic.

It is that face of theirs that SOUNDGARDEN show clearly in ‘Live from the Artists Den’.

Filmed and recorded in 2013 during the tour for ‘King Animal’, the movie captures a show in front of about 1,500 people in Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre. Instead of something you remember from MTV, the set opens with ‘Incessant Mace’ – a slowly dragging sludge tune, whose choice as an opener is pure misanthropy. Then, the band continues with almost all of its current album (just like on the CD, ‘Rowing’ is the highlight), all the singles from the 90s (even if you’ve had enough of ‘Black Hole Sun’, the performance here is awesome) and a dozen songs that make their concert-film debut (the sonic heaviness of ‘4th of July’ is magnificently captured).

The cinematography is focused on the musicians on stage, showing mostly closeups of their faces and hands. Rarely do you see them in whole length – and rarely do you see the stage effects like the animated backdrop. This creates a somewhat intimate experience where the musical performance comes out at the forefront.

While Matt Cameron crushes the drumset as he plays ‘Jesus Christ Pose’, you can almost feel the adrenaline in his body. Kim Thayil plays as if he is in a universe of his own – swaying in the rhythm of his odd riffs with a half-smile on his face. Ben Shepherd, in turn, looks like a sociopath that wants to kill everyone – an urge he subdues with the occasional joint between songs. And among those talented and original musicians, Chris Cornell still manages to stand out with his amazing voice and performance (and strangely shy stage presence).

After the end of the show, Thayil leaves his guitar on and the noise from the feedback drowns out the audience’s applause as the final credits roll. The coda with which ‘Live from the Artists Den’ fades out seems to symbolize the way SOUNDGARDEN themselves are about to fade into the black with Cornell’s tragic death. Never again will we have such a strange gem. But it’s enough that we’ve already had it once. And this show captures it magnificently.