Soundgarden, 'Black Rain' -- Video Premiere

When fans have been clamoring for your reunion, you have to come back in style. Seattle grunge heroes Soundgarden understand that, and after finally answering the calls for the quartet of Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Sheperd to reform, the band returned to the stage in full force at Lollapalooza and a few club gigs. Now, the band has released a new video for 'Black Rain,' an outtake from the 'Badmotorfinger' era that will be released on the upcoming 'Telephantasm' hits compilation. The clip -- their first in over a decade -- features an animated version of Soundgarden has to save Seattle from monsters.

Directed by 'Metalocalypse' co-creator Brendon Small, the awesome video resembles a mix of Saturday morning cartoons and the cult classic film 'Heavy Metal.' "First off, Kim Thayil had a pretty strong idea of what he wanted," Small tells Spinner. "He had key words -- monsters; big, huge, wide shots; Dethklok; getting them in there somewhere, and Soundgarden. And then this idea of this gigantic robot that's going to fight the monsters, Dethklok screws something up, and it's up to Soundgarden to kind of fix and save their home city of Seattle that's been under attack by these outer space monsters."

Thayil is more modest though about his contributions, crediting the dialogue between the two for the video. "It was just a conversation he and I had and we exchanged some humorous insights into his TV show, 'Metalocalypse,' and pointing out the elements in the show that we thought were strong, which would be fun in an aesthetic sense," Thayil says. "There are some beautiful elements we thought we'd really like to use in the video and some humorous elements that we thought we'd incorporate in this video that comes in the form of giant translucent creatures."

By actually becoming a cartoon, does the band hope to earn some "cool points" from fans? "I don't know, but if you have kids you get a lot from them," Cornell says. "It's not on the same list as having Johnny Cash do a song you wrote, that's for sure, but there's definitely like a list of certain things you can possibly manage to pull off and that's one of them, I guess."

If the new video isn't enough to satiate fans, Cornell characterizes Soundgarden as an "active" band that's pondering some new tracks. "Here we are, all these years later and we're in a room and talking about new music and it doesn't feel like carrying a mountain up a hill," he says. "It seems like a completely natural idea and a natural fun thing to do, all the baggage that I think can sometimes come along with that we don't have it at all."

'Telephantasm' will be released on Sept. 28 in a bundle with the new 'Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock' game, as well in three three expanded editions that feature vinyl copies, Soundgarden's first-ever DVD and five unreleased tracks. The single disc album will be available on its own beginning Oct. 5.