On stage Friday night at the sold-out Aragon was Chris Cornell, former frontman for grunge icons Soundgarden, surrounded by the remnants of rap-metal firecrackers Rage Against the Machine. It’s a match made in some boardroom — a powerful lead singer in search of a band paired awkwardly with a powerful band in search of a lead singer. Despite it all, the Frankengroup known as Audioslave, somehow has thrived. The band’s sophomore effort, “Out of Exile,” isn’t due until the end of May, and the new material the band unveiled Friday — slightly less plodding, perhaps, than that on its awkward first album — largely fell on deaf ears. The crowd was primed for the familiar, not just songs such as “Cochise” and “Set It Off” but Cornell’s and Morello’s inimitable voices. In fact, the night quickly turned into a three-way battle among Cornell’s ever remarkable scream, Morello’s guitar heroics and the venue’s muddier-than-usual sound.
The real winner of the evening was the past. The biggest crowd reaction came when Cornell took a breather as the remaining trio exploded into an instrumental tease of Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls on Parade” before bringing Cornell back to perform Rage’s “Sleep Now in the Fire” in its incendiary entirely. Audioslave then launched into Soundgarden’s “Outshined.” Cornell, an acoustic guitar draped across his chest, later played a solo rendition of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” before bringing the rest of Audioslave out for their power ballad “I Am the Highway.”