In Round 2 of Soundgarden Against the Machine, it looks like big-lunged bellower from Bigfoot country is getting the upper hand.

The solid but unspectacular Out of Exile, the sophomore disc from much-heralded alt-metal supergroup Audioslave, owes far more to singer Chris Cornell's Seattle grunge-metal roots than it does to the L.A. rap-rock of his bandmates.

One listen to the swaggering dinosaur guitar riffs and thundering backbeats of Your Time Has Come, Man or Animal and the title cut -- not to mention the quiet-loud dynamics of moodier fare like Doesn't Remind Me and Drown Me Slowly -- suggests Cornell is calling the tunes more often than he did on their 2002 debut.

This is not a bad thing. But it is not always necessarily a good thing, either. Despite his rawk pedigree, Cornell has always nursed a vaguely unsettling love of power ballads -- and he indulges that a little too frequently here, resulting in a disc with a few too many cuts that smoulder and growl ominously but never quite burst into open flame.

At times, self-indulgent axeman Tom Morello's chameleonic fretboard pyrotechnics are the only obvious sign this isn't a Cornell solo disc or a half-baked Soundgarden reunion.

Of course, that line may get blurrier now that the boys have officially become slaves to their past by adding their old bands' material to their live set.

Stay tuned for Round 3 of this grunge match.

Track Listing:

1. Your Time Has Come
2. Out Of Exile
3. Be Yourself
4. Doesn't Remind Me
5. Drown Me Slowly
6. Heaven's Dead
7. The Worm
8. Man Or Animal
9. Yesterday To Tomorrow
10. Dandelion
11. #1 Zero
12. The Curse