What’s more memorable about Dirt, however, is its unguarded (if obliquely cast) Staley diaries of drug addiction. The songs aren’t musically involving as such, but the intensity and density of their performances gives them an effectively menacing aura. Taking structural cues from Metallica and Pearl Jam (and getting an assist from Slayer’s Tom Araya), Alice in Chains and producer Dave Jerden fry up a sizzling metal platter with a thunderous bottom (credit bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney) on Dirt lockstep riffs move songs along like machinery performing intricate and repetitive assembly line maneuvers. (Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, who doesn’t emit Plant-like noises in public, also sings along.) Inarticulating his programmatic bleak vision in “Am I Inside,” Staley sticks the only memorable hook here into “Black is all I feel/So this is how it feels to be free.” The unlisted fifth track is a pastiche of dance-hall piano, silly samples, industrial pounding and sound effects that teases a surprising lighter side from a generally dismal band. The five new songs on Sap amplify the band’s Led Zep exertions with ruminative rusticity (“Brother,” the all- acoustic “Right Turn”), moody bluesiness (“Got Me Wrong”) and not-the-real-thing-but-big-fans guest appearance by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and the dreadful Ann Wilson of Heart. Trotting out one of the hoariest clichés in the punkmetal phrase book and setting the agenda for much of what follows, guitarist/songwriter Jerry Cantrell has singer Layne Staley open the thuggish bore that is Facelift by declaring “We Die Young.” Attempting poetry-as-a-second-language, the songs rock hard in the service of such lunkheaded lines (some attributable to the vocalist) as “Walls of thought, strong and high/As my castle crumbles with time” and “Here I sit writing on the paper/Trying to make the words you can’t ignore.” Such inanity would be excusable if the music supplied the missing imagination or wit, but Facelift is dismayingly consistent in that regard. If it wasn’t for bad shit, Alice in Chains wouldn’t have no shit (to sing about) at all. Mediocre to the core and with at least one member regrettably quick to make the same heroin mistake as misguided Charlie Parker acolytes seeking unattainable inspiration via substance abuse, the quartet owes its dramatic tug to the personal messes chronicled on its records.
Alice in chains greatest hits 2001 full#
That leaves Alice in Chains, predestined by its torpid unoriginality to contentedly embody dumb-rock as if the ’70s were still in full swing. Soundgarden wants to be the serious modern equal to its idol, gods of ’90s thunder, while Pearl Jam strives to nullify the issue with compelling faith in its own individuality. While the third category produced the erratic tradition-busting of Mudhoney and Nirvana, the first two yielded Tad, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, retroids whose essential differences from vintage metal have less to do with the sound of music than their distinctive senses of self and purpose. The region’s burgeoning hard-rock scene comes in three varieties: ex-punks who worship Led Zeppelin, non-punks who worship Led Zeppelin and permanent punks who just don’t give a fuck.
Then came Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones to trample the line away with abusive drumming, super riffology and screaming id-iocy crossed with rustic acoustics, intricately ambitious arrangements and lyrics sprung from sources other than horror movies and superhero comics.įlash forward to the American Northwest, circa 1989. Despite some overlap (Deep Purple), it was pretty easy to tell which hard-rock bands were seeking to beat audiences into submission and which ones were expecting credit for melody, dynamics and at least a pretense of innovation. It was all so simple before Led Zeppelin.