After a long break, Soundgarden proves they still have it

If inertia grew a beard and donned a stocking cap, it could serve as Kim Thayil's stunt double.

At times, the Soundgarden guitarist seems as resistant to change as he is to shaving products: he'll milk a riff of every ounce of heaviness like a drunk siphoning the last few drops of beer from a bottle of Budweiser.

His playing registers in the gut as much as the ears, roiling innards like greasy truck stop eats

Thayil's brothers in bombast: singer/guitarist Chris Cornell, whose soaring upper register peaks somewhere around the crest of Mount Everest; drummer Matt Cameron, who packs the bands tunes with more left turns than a NASCAR race; and bassist Ben Shepherd, who, at one point during "Gun," aimed his instrument at the crowd like a rifle, a fitting visual metaphor for the menace implied in his playing.

At The Joint at the Hard Rock on Saturday, where said dudes stopped as part of their first tour in 14 years, the band looked scruffy and disinterested but sounded well kempt and fully engaged.

They don't move around much, as if each stray gesture cost them money -- that'll be $100 for that hair flip, Mr. Cornell.

But then again, they really don't need to, as their songs are kinetic enough, at least in terms of their arrangements, if not their subject matter.

At The Joint, Cornell continually gave voice to the kind of existential dread that normally results in Zoloft prescriptions and/or extended stays in a padded cell.

"Words you say never seem to live up to the ones inside your head," he sang during a tempestuous "The Day I Tried To Live." "The lives we make never seem to ever get us anywhere but dead."

Elsewhere, he turned a knowing, winking fatalism into a lusty sing-along during an especially well-received "Burden In My Hand."

Everybody, all together now: "Kill yourself and kill your health and kill everything you love."

But for all the angst barnacled to the grunge boom of the early '90s, of which Soundgarden was a defining act, the band never comes across as mopes or scab pickers, probably because their tunes sound so invigorated even at their most lyrically morose.

The band makes shadowy hard rock of a near-metal heft without all the things that render both the subject of occasional ridicule: the professorial over-seriousness, the arch gestures, the allergic reaction to self-awareness.

As such, their repertoire exudes power and eschews pomp.

On Saturday, songs like "Loud Love," "Outshined" and "Slaves & Bulldozers" were characterized by a dense overgrowth of lugubrious riffs with Cornell's wail puncturing the murk like a fog light.

Cornell's finest moment may have come during "Beyond the Wheel," one of two tunes where he put his guitar down to focus solely on singing.

And that the sinewy front man did, belting the tune out with the sustained power of Luciano Pavarotti on a Slim Fast kick.

Churning through elephantine dirges ("Searching With My Good Eye Closed") contrasted with psychedelic reveries ("Head Down"), Soundgarden mined a deep catalog that has held up remarkably well, one that doesn't seem to have aged a day past the Clinton administration.

And so this night didn't seem like an exercise in nostalgia, even though all the material was at least a decade old.

A long rest has only made this bunch even more restive.

"Once asleep, but now I stand," Cornell sang during a stirring "4th of July." "And I still remember."

And with that, new memories were made.