Telephantasm

Telephantasm is a compilation album by the American rock band Soundgarden. Featuring songs spanning the band's 13-year career, it was released on September 28, 2010 through A&M Records. The album was certified platinum by RIAA after its first day of retail availability based on the one million discs that were included in packages for the video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.

Overview

The album was released in September 2010 on A&M Records following the band's reunion earlier that year. The career-spanning retrospective album includes an unreleased track, "Black Rain", taken from the Badmotorfinger recording sessions. In late August 2010, "Black Rain" reached #44 on the Canadian Hot 100 and #96 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. "Black Rain" peaked at #14 on the Billboard Rock Songs chart.

Kim Thayil explained the title Telephantasm as "an illusion at a distance, or a ghost from afar. Which I think would be an appropriate reference to what we have here — a retrospective of a band that had been inactive for thirteen years." He added that the album emerged from a project to do a "B-Sides" compilation following the 1997 greatest hits album A-Sides, but the band decided to include some more known songs because "we need to re-establish ourselves with the rock and roll audience out there, the younger audience."