When Audioslave returned to the studio to make Out of Exile, they had a big advantage over recording their 2002 debut: They actually knew one another.

"On the first album, Chris [singer, Cornell] didn't know the guys so well, and the guys didn't know Chris so well," says Rick Rubin, who produced Out of Exile. "The first album was like an experiment; this was more like, 'This is what we do.' There was just less apprehension. Everybody was more comfortable with each other."

Experience paid off with their second album, Out of Exile, which sold 363,000 copies in its first two weeks and debuted at Number One on the charts. Although its backbone remains Tom Morello's thick hard-rock guitar riffs and the surging ex-Rage Against the Machine rhythm section of drummer Brad Wilk and bassist Tim Commerford, Cornell takes a more central role in the sound, with vocal melodies reminiscent of his best work with Soundgarden.

"Chris' magic is his ability to pull great melodies out of the ether," says Morello. "When we're jamming on grooves or riffs or haunting chord progressions, it is a pretty effortless thing with him."

Rock radio is responding to the album; the first single, "Be Yourself," is Number One on the rock chart, according to Radio and Records. "There's simplicity to that music," says Keith Hastings, program director of WAAF, a hard-rock station in Boston. Hastings says he hears at least three more hit singles on the record, including "Doesn't Remind Me" and "The Worm." "They don't mess with the formula that much -- they do what they do better than anybody else."

"We've certainly jelled into Audioslave as a complete band," says Morello. "When we wrote and recorded the first album, we'd played zero shows together as a live band. Our first show was on David Letterman." The quartet will continue touring Europe through mid-July, then take a break and return for a U.S. tour in late summer or fall.