Chris Cornell and Timbaland: A match made in musical hell

On the cover of his new album "Scream," Chris Cornell is smashing up his guitar. That's right: The sex god of ‘90s grunge is destroying the instrument that made him famous, jumping up in the air and hurling the object down on the ground with a devilish glee. It's a fitting cover for undoubtedly the most bizarre record of the man's career. On "Scream," the former Soundgarden front man trades grunge for glitz, ditching a four-piece band for the ubiquitous techno-funk of Timbaland, the production wizard largely responsible for the sound of pop music this millennium.

Talk about a musical shift. For much of his career, Cornell built his reputation on a steadfast commitment to "rawk," keeping his mane long, his lyrics lurid and his riffs brutal. The idea of the man turning into an R&B diva, as he does on "Scream," was - and still is - a baffling heresy. Sure, he covered Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" on his last album, but he drained every last drop of funk from the original, transforming the song into an angry grunge anthem. Before his first Timbaland-assisted singles started charting, Cornell hadn't given the slightest hint that there was a budding Justin Timberlake lurking underneath that grizzled and tattooed exterior.

As I picked up "Scream" for the first time, I realized it really wasn't all that different from Elton John releasing an album cover where he's chopping up a piano for firewood. Sadly, just as that album would likely be a career disaster, "Scream" is an utter car crash of a record. It's not that it's bad, exactly. "Bad" would be a compliment. With every passing minute, "Scream" stretches the definition of "bad" to the realms of sheer implausibility. It's the musical equivalent of an Ed Wood movie: You have to hear it to believe it.

I'll admit that the idea of Cornell working with Timbaland sounds vaguely nice in theory. Cornell has pop star looks, a sexy croon and a knack for writing catchy melodies. Timbaland, meanwhile, has proven his ability to adapt his jittery production style to different performers, emphasizing the disco-ball for Justin Timberlake while crafting more avant-garde, left-field musical backdrops for artists like Missy Elliott and Bjork. What gave me a sliver of hope for the "Scream" project was Timbaland's oft-professed desire to make a rock album. Was it so implausible that the man who'd revolutionized three genres - rap, R&B and pop - in less than a decadewouldn't be able to carry off his musical Midas touch with a fourth?

Well, put bluntly, the answer is no. In execution, "Scream" is quite hypnotically awful. Neither collaborator makes the slightest effort to accommodate the other, and the result is an album existing oddly in limbo. Listening to this mess, one starts to wonder if the two collaborators ever even met.

On one side, we've got Cornell sneering and rasping and whooping like Kurt Cobain on a bad day. On the other, we've got perhaps Timbaland's most lavish production work to date, a sonic wonderland overflowing with studio tweaks and twitches. Taken alone, both aspects of the record are perfectly good. In fact, I'm tempted to say this is Timbaland's most accomplished music yet: Detailed, hook-laden and occasionally operatic in grandeur, it's clearly the product of a man at the top of his game. But matched to Cornell's rugged vocals, his production sounds like nothing more than a jokey mashup. If you can imagine the vocals of Nirvana's "Nevermind" grafted over the beats of Justin Timberlake's "Futuresex/Lovesounds," you're close to grasping the sheer awkwardness of "Scream."

Singling out songs for their individual faults is really a rather fruitless task, like trying to rank human rights atrocities on a scale of bad to worse. After all, within the first two minutes of the record, your ears are likely to be bleeding. The opener, "Part of Me," sounds like a redneck stumbling into an electro-dance party, with Cornell repeatedly chanting, "That bitch ain't a part of me" over an abrasively atonal beat.

It's mostly downhill from there. "Time" buckles under the weight of synthetic harmonies; "Get Up" is an awkward call to the dance floor, mercilessly slathered in auto-tune; and on the odd Middle Eastern grunge of "Take Me Alive," Justin Timberlake stops by to contribute some asinine backing vocals. It's the record's most tragic moment: Every time I hear it, I imagine just how good "Scream" might have been with Timberlake's elastic falsetto in the place of Cornell's weathered yowl.

Of course, I'll admit that isolated moments of the album do work, in a totally bonkers way. Amid the synthetically treated vocals and melodramatic arrangements, I did occasionally get a glimpse of what Timbo and Cornell were going for, and two or three times I was convinced that their vision of R&B-rock might work.

The title track in particular is an intriguing listen, matching plush, operatic production to an absolute killer of melody. For perhaps the only time on "Scream," Cornell doesn't scream - and it's a blissful moment. Instead, Cornell's vocals smolder over Timbaland's velvet musical bed, slowly and steadily building to the climactic chorus. Sure, it's hardly brilliant, but at least you get a sense that the two men were in the same room while the song was being written.

Despite its lofty ambitions, "Scream" is destined to go down as a tragic mistake for both artists involved. Predictably perhaps, the album's been a commercial disappointment, shunned by pop and rock fans alike. It was meant to revitalize Cornell's somewhat flagging solo career, but it's done the opposite. In fact, I don't think Cornell could possibly have done more to alienate his devoted legion of post-grunge followers.

If you're in the mood for some good, sadistic fun, go check out the youtube.com comments on Cornell's new videos. In one of the few expletive-free posts, kenshi05andre implores, "Chris what the hell!! lets go rock man!!" Another fan laments, "I miss Soundgarden," a common sentiment that crops up in at least every other post. More solemn still is Slaky 311's pronouncement of "R.I.P. Chris Cornell." In the end, though, it's Cornell himself who best sums up this ungodly collaboration. Halfway through the album, over shimmering synths that sound lifted from Usher's "Love in this Club," Cornell cries out like a man in desperate pain: "You're like a diamond and I'm like glass / Like oil and water ,we always clash." I couldn't have said it better myself.