Chris Cornell was recently interviewed by ARISTDirect and was asked a slew of interesting questions, such as about individual King Animal tracks and the inspiration for the album’s artwork. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Have you always maintained a connection to the woods and the outdoors? The cover art for King Animal and Superunknown reflect that.

It somehow works [Laughs]. They changed it now, but there was this picture on iTunes. I think it was taken outside in Seattle. They erased whatever the backdrop was and they put something behind it they thought was similar to the cover art. Instead, it looked like a moose chandelier you might see in a ski lodge [Laughs]. It was pretty funny. I made fun of it on stage a couple of times, and I think somebody got the message and they took it down. Even though it was goofy, I think there is some element of us being from the Northwest in a natural way that works. The Northwest is not Alaska, and it’s not New York City. I, for one, have always been influenced by the geography because it’s dramatic. It’s not Minneapolis, and it’s not Texas. It’s very hilly. There are mountain ranges in every direction. There’s deep salt water, and there are huge lakes. There are giant trees that you don’t see anywhere else. Then, there’s this foreboding darkness that’s around for about nine months out of the year. That had an impact on me as a kid. I’m sure that, because we’re so sensitive to our surroundings and with the way the music is created and how the lyrics follow the mood of the music, there has to be a direct connection to the Pacific Northwest. There has to be. That’s always made sense to me. If you look at the cover of Superunknown, we didn’t tell someone to take some trees, solarize them, and put them upside down because we want that element. That was somebody else interpreting the music. It’s the same thing with Josh Graham here. He’s interpreting what he hears. As an artist, he’s picking up on something that must be there, but it certainly wasn’t something we told him to do specifically.

Read the article in its entirity here.