Audioslave's first album has been in stores less than a month, with healthy sales, so why is everyone already predicting that this invigorating new hard-rock group will break up?

"Audioslave probably won't be a long-term commitment," declares Blender magazine.

"This may be the only album Audioslave generates as a unit," warns Spin in its review.

But while everyone's getting caught up in the speculation over how long Audioslave will be with us, the more fascinating story may be how it got here. The arrival of former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell is really Chapter 2 in Audioslave's story. Chapter 1 begins with Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha's exit.

It was a painful time, and Rage's three instrumentalists - guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk - turned to a motivation counselor for help.

"There had been so much tension in the band that we needed to find ways of making sure everyone felt comfortable saying whatever was on their mind," says Commerford, 34.

Wilk, also 34, says he went through a period of self-doubt. "When your band falls apart, you really question yourself," he says. "Do I still want to do this? Can I do it? You worry about your abilities."

Also on the table were three key questions: Do the three stay together? If so, do they stick with the name? And do they keep the rap-rock style?

"The worst thing would have been if Rage got another rapper and tried to be Rage with someone else," record producer Rick Rubin says. "Even if they found someone who was phenomenal, and we made an album better than any Rage albums, it could be viewed as artificial."

So Rubin suggested Cornell, who had done a directionless solo album after Seattle grunge architects Soundgarden split up. But would Cornell set aside his solo aspirations and return to a band? Early in 2001, he told Morello he would be interested in exploring music with the guitarist, whose work he had admired.

But Cornell, 38, was taken aback when Morello suggested that Wilk and Commerford should also be involved.

"Nothing against them, but it didn't sound like a good idea to step into an existing band that had such a unique sound as Rage," Cornell says. "Were they going to expect me to rap or write politically motivated lyrics like Zack? I had no intention of doing that, and I was very up front about it."

Cornell was still wary when the four musicians went into rehearsals in February 2001.

"But they were gracious, open to my ideas. I was also encouraging to them, which I don't think they were used to. It seemed like they were used to a lot of internal scrutiny and tension, and I think that is crippling to creativity."

The Rage team was thrilled.

They came up with almost a song a day for three weeks. Music, however, was only one challenge for Audioslave. For instance, they were under contract to two record labels and signed by two separate managers.

The labels, Interscope for Cornell and Epic for the ex-Rage trio, worked out an agreement under which Epic would release the first album and Interscope would release the second.

Everything, including the record, was pretty much in place by last summer, when Audio- slave planned to make its concert debut on the Ozzfest tour. But the management situation had become so draining that the band bowed out of the tour. Cornell thought there was a real chance the group might just put out the album and then call it quits during a six-week break.

"I went home to Seattle," he says. "I said, 'Unless we resolve the management issue, I don't see how we can move forward.'"

To end the impasse, they severed ties with their rival managers and signed with the Firm, the management group that handles Korn, Limp Bizkit and the Dixie Chicks, and Epic finally set a release date for the album.

"I couldn't be happier," says Morello, 38. "From the moment we got together with Chris, it felt like a runaway train, an incredible, liberating burst of creativity."

The opening-week sales figure of 162,000 for Audioslave was less than half the first-week total of Rage Against the Machine's final collection of original material, 1999's The Battle of Los Angeles. Still, it's impressive considering it'll take some time for Rage and Soundgarden fans to realize the connections in Audioslave. The group hopes to help by touring extensively.

Audioslave surely would have had better initial sales with the Rage name, but that would have been short-term thinking, and this band insists that it's in it for the long haul.

"As delicate as it was when Zack left, I don't think we ever thought about breaking up," Morello says. "We had lost a singer, but we hadn't lost our love of playing together. I'm still proud of what we did with Rage. My only regret is we didn't make more music together. I don't want to make that mistake again."