Alice In Chains: Rainier Fog

ALICE IN CHAINS: RAINIER FOG (2018)

1) The One You Know; 2) Rainier Fog; 3) Red Giant; 4) Fly; 5) Drone; 6) Deaf Ears Blind Eyes; 7) Maybe; 8) So Far Under; 9) Never Fade; 10) All I Am.

General verdict: Yet another pile of generic mock-grunge sludge to tarnish the good name of Alice In Chains, the Seattle musical scene, and rock music in general.

Unfortunately, my hopes did not come to pass. Five years after The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (has it really been that long? feels like yesterday!), the bunch of second-rate impersonators calling themselves Alice In Chains are back again to saddle us with one more hour of songs that have no reason to exist other than gently flog the still quite dead horse of Seattle grunge. The only difference is that the flogging is now accompanied with flashier PR: the album title itself refers to Mount Rainier, and the album release was promoted with several well-advertised Seattle gigs and even a pop-up museum installation on the bandʼs history.

All of which, actually, is a rare case where PR activity is superior to the main work. Going to an Alice In Chains concert or educating oneself on the history of Alice In Chains is one thing — trudging through this predictable, unbearably generic sludge is quite another. Rainier Fog passes the «bland shit» test with flying colors: two listens in, I cannot remember a single musical phrase or vocal hook from any of the songs — at best, I have a distinct recollection that some of these phrases and hooks very vaguely reminded me of certain moments from Facelift and Dirt, albums that still live on quite vividly in my memory even if I may not have relistened to them properly for several years.

At this point, I think, the band is doing a disservice not only to itself but also to the rock genre in general: younger generations who have no idea what the fuss is about and whose first exposure to the world of grunge guitars and rock screaming just might be this album will only emerge from the experience with a strong sense of disbelief about how anybody in anybodyʼs right mind could ever enjoy something like this. Believe me, kids, there used to be a time when (the best) grunge singers could actually convey feelings of real spiritual pain, rather than sound like monotonously programmed voice synthesizers. And there used to be a time when guitar players like Jerry Cantrell could search out the most motherfuckingly meanest guitar tones in existence and use them to play chord changes that actually reminded you of a real Mount Rainier eruption, rather than of tranquil rivers of dense shit steadily flowing through Seattleʼs sewers.

Rainier Fog offers no variety, no diversity, not a single musical, vocal, or lyrical idea that has not already been executed in better form by these guys themselves or any of their other Seattle pals. There is very little to distinguish one song from another; of course, Alice In Chains were never known for featuring variegated mood palettes, but at least they could range from angry to pensive to mournful to agonizing — Rainier Fog enters the «slow simulated anger» mode on the first track and never ever lets go, even on the one and only track where they switch to acoustic guitars for a brief spell (ʽFlyʼ — which the song refuses to do), not to mention the excruciatingly torturous seven-minute finale (ʽAll I Amʼ), a dirge based on, I think, a totality of two musical phrases that might have been recovered by Cantrell over a couple of minutes of «creativity».

None of this is a surprise — you would have to be an almost parody-level kind of optimist to expect a miracle after the previous two records. The only thing that still seems surprising is the occasionally encountered reaction of admiration, from fans and critics alike, for how Alice In Chains still manage to «evolve» and «find new directions». "The band are much more than a simple grunge band these days", writes one journalist (right, and in the Layne Staley days they were apparently just a simple grunge band!); the band is "breathing new life into their signature sound, with a diverse (sic!) and deeply emotional collection that history will surely view as a career-defining statement", writes another — are you shitting me? Come on guys, this is Jerry frickinʼ Cantrell you are writing about, not Pablo Escobar. He is harmless, he can take some well-deserved beating — nobody is going to deprive him of his past laurels for his current sins. Oh well, at least their album sales seem to be slipping at this point; maybe that is a good sign (who knows, maybe if The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here did not miraculously hit #2 on the charts, they would have lacked the incentive to churn out this even shittier follow-up). 

Alice In Chains: The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

ALICE IN CHAINS: THE DEVIL PUT DINOSAURS HERE (2013)

1) Hollow; 2) Pretty Done; 3) Stone; 4) Voices; 5) The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here; 6) Lab Monkey; 7) Low Ceiling; 8) Breath On A Window; 9) Scalpel; 10) Phantom Limb; 11) Hung On A Hook; 12) Choke.

Well, so much for naïve optimism. Maybe if more critics were more critical, and more fanatics less fanatical, Cantrell would take heed and correct the formalistic mistake of the band's last al­bum — as it happens, not only is nothing corrected, but everything is worsened to the point of nauseating. Where Black Gives Way To Blue was a misstep, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is an unfunny joke. It might have been a modestly funny joke, if it weren't so goddamn long, but at over sixty minutes, the whole damn thing is just excruciating.

You see, once upon a time, there was a star-struck alliance between two people — a searcher and a sufferer. The searcher was totally sincere and dedicated in his search for new types of sounds, acoustic and electric; the sufferer was equally sincere about his suffering and had a knack for credibly conveying that suffering to the people around him. The alliance produced some of the finest music of the 1990s, still every bit as impressive and resonating today, if not more so. Then the sufferer finally had his suffering cut short, and with this, it's almost as if the searcher totally lost the stimulus for continuing with his search. Honestly, the closest analogy to this situation that comes to mind is The Doors continuing without Jim Morrison. Remember Other Voices? No? Good. Most likely, you won't be remembering The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here in a couple yea... uh, weeks from now on, either.

There are twelve new songs on this album, running for about five-six minutes on the average. Each of the songs features a brand new Jerry Cantrell riff, usually one of the grumbly, distorted, lower-than-low ones. Each of the songs is sung by lead singer William DuVall, very frequently in dual harmony with Cantrell (actually, I think Cantrell may have some lead parts as well, but at this point, their singing tones are almost impossible to tell apart). Each of the songs sets the exact same «brooding» mood — very dark, very unhappy, very misanthropic. And not a single song has got a distinct personality of its own. The whole damn package could just as well have been computer-generated. Brutal intro, stiff verse, stiff chorus, repeat, solo, long repetitive outro, next. Sixty minutes on, when the music is finally over, you feel like you have just emerged from under a pile of rock sediments. Hopefully, the sun is shining.

Now none of this would be quite as painful if it weren't for two facts. First, this «give the people what they want» principle has completely ruined Cantrell as a riff-writer. Every once in a while, through a happy accident, he is still able to fall upon an auspicious note/tone combination — like the riff of ʽStoneʼ, where there is a strategically placed Iommi-style bend that gives the whole thing a «giant-from-under-the-mountain» feel. But most of the time, we have to tolerate meaning­less strings of heavy notes that are neither emotionally loaded nor technically complex (ʽPhantom Limbʼ, ʽPretty Doneʼ, title track, you name it). If you feel like disagreeing, just put this back to back with ʽRain When I Dieʼ or ʽRoosterʼ to remind yourself how low the once mighty has fallen. And the reason? Simple enough, I think — the man goes to work with the set goal of «writing yet another Alice In Chains song». The most assured way to ruin potentially good art. Just ask The Rolling Stones for confirmation.

Second — sorry, but this DuVall person is a complete sham. The man sings every bit of this material as if he were a pre-programmed robot. Layne may have been a somewhat «typical» sin­ger for the grunge era, but he actually sang like a human being. A permanently depressed human being, sure, but still one capable of emotional range, quiet, loud, brooding, angry, sentimental, offensive, whatever. The vocals on this album are totally blurry. Just some random guy mum­bling «dark» stuff, sometimes raising or lowering his voice when the algorithm tells him to. No personality whatsoever. We may be happy for him that he doesn't do drugs (well, at least I think he doesn't), but he pretty much relates to Staley like an authentic Gucci bag or something like that relates to a cheap counterfeit. I feel really baffled when reading anonymous Internet assessments like: «...William DuVall's vocals don't necessarily deliver the same sort of pained, shuddering punch that Staley's were able to give, but he continues to prove himself as a worthy successor as the band's new singer...» ...what? And who the heck needs this self-conscious attempt to synthe­size another Alice In Chains album without the «pained, shuddering punch»? I want the «pained, shuddering punch», goddammit. If you cannot deliver — get the hell out of here.

Or, alternately, deliver some­thing else and don't call yourself Alice In Chains. Because, frankly, if we forget all about the prehistory of this particular band, The Devil has even fewer reasons to exist. When twelve draggy, overlong, gray-toned, poorly-riffed, emotionally monotonous com­positions irritate your senses instead of penetrating them, nor is there a single bit of innovative thinking anywhere in sight, just droning sludge for the sake of being sludgy, what in the world could motivate you to defend this music other than nostalgic fandom? All right, if Cantrell ma­nages to make a profit on this sludge, I'm happy for him — for his immense contribution to the world of music, he deserves everything he can get — but that does not make the record any less of a cheap rip-off. There's just too much of a «big lie» aura around it — they make this «formally depressing» music without actually feeling depressed. A fake, phoney album, and it makes me sad that quite a few people still ended up mistaking it for the real thing. Out of love and respect for «classic era» Alice In Chains, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here gets as low a thumbs down as it can possibly get, and here's hoping the guys just stick to touring from now on.

Check "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" (CD) on Amazon
Check "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" (MP3) on Amazon

Alice In Chains: Live

ALICE IN CHAINS: LIVE (1990-1996; 2000)

1) Bleed The Freak; 2) Queen Of The Rodeo; 3) Angry Chair; 4) Man In The Box; 5) Love, Hate, Love; 6) Rooster; 7) Would?; 8) Junkhead; 9) Dirt; 10) Them Bones; 11) God Am; 12) Again; 13) A Little Bitter; 14) Dam That River.

During the long waiting period that followed Tripod — the period when Columbia Records ex­pected Layne Staley to pull himself together, yet he pulled a fast one on them and pulled himself apart instead — slaves were put to the hard task of searching the vaults for more Alice In Chains stuff to satisfy the presumably hungry public. Results consisted of a large boxset, Music Bank, which I do not give a special review because the content of previously unavailable material was quite low (and also for adhering to sinful compiling practices, such as including Dirt in its entire­ty but replacing the final recording of 'Junkhead' with a demo version so that the true fan would have to buy the album separately); and this live album, with recordings culled from a variety of shows, including five songs from their very last two gigs with Staley.

Unlike Music Bank, the live album is well worth your money if you love the band; it is nice, af­ter all, to have a proper document of their live show that is not Unplugged — it certainly feels weird to have one of the loudest and crunchiest bands of the decades represented exclusively through their acoustic out­put when it comes to live shows. Live corrects that problem; technically, its existence is a necessity.

Two things dampen the joy, though. First, the sound quality is very much so-so; not bootleg level, but something tells me these recordings were not originally intended for commercial release. Vo­cals are captured poorly, guitars are not properly separated from crowd noises, and drums can sometimes be very tinny. In comparison with the band's tight-as-hell production standards in the studio, Live almost feels... limp? Which brings us to the second problem: the songs were so per­fect in the first place — brutal, ass-kicking, and simultaneously polished to the highest level of catchiness and expressivity — that improving upon them in a live setting is virtually impossible. Face it: your guitar sound will be sloppier, your vocalist will imminently miss some notes, all the cool tricks you used in the studio to spice up the atmosphere will be irreproductible, and what do you get in return? The mystical, untappable live feel?..

Track-wise, there are only a couple minor surprises: one of the band's two contributions to the soundtrack of Last Action Hero, 'A Little Bitter' (decent, but unspectacular funk-rocker), and pro­bably the oddest song the band ever did but never released in a studio version: 'Queen Of The Rodeo', an explosive mix of country-rock and thrash metal (!) that sends up both genres as rough­ly as possible (particularly the former, with telling lines like 'I ain't no queer, go fuck a steer'). If you have to know what Alice In Chains' understanding of humour amounts to, you will have to get acquainted with the record.

As for the regular material, not a single song opens itself up from any unexpected sides; it is ge­nerally just a question of how well they can reproduce the power of the originals on stage. Props have to be given to Layne, who, despite all the reputed assholishness of his character, works real­ly hard to give the people what they want. But, let's admit it, he is still better in the studio. There is no improvisation, either, or surprising rearrangements of any of the songs — which is under­standable, since most of them are performed here within months or so of the studio release. All in all, Live is certainly truer to the true face of Alice In Chains than Unplugged ever hoped to be — yet, out of the two, Unplugged is certainly the more interesting project.

Alice In Chains: Black Gives Way To Blue

ALICE IN CHAINS: BLACK GIVES WAY TO BLUE (2009)

1) All Secrets Known; 2) Check My Brain; 3) Last Of My Kind; 4) Your Decision; 5) A Looking In View; 6) When The Sun Rose Again; 7) Acid Bubble; 8) Lesson Learned; 9) Take Her Out; 10) Private Hell; 11) Black Gives Way To Blue.

Staley's tragic, but more or less predictable drug-related demise in 2002 seemed to have sealed Alice In Chains' future. Not that they really needed one: with Tripod, they had pretty much said all they had to say — and, besides, Layne had already been properly dead ever since that album's release, as can be easily seen on the video for Unplugged. Accordingly, Cantrell, still very much alive and musically active, concentrated on his own solo career. For a while.

A few years after Layne's death, however, it somehow turned out that the remaining band mem­bers sort of missed each other, and this led to a series of reunion concerts with various friends in­vited as temporary lead vocalists. One of these turned out to be William DuVall, singer and gui­tarist of Comes With The Fall, a minor hard rock outfit from Atlanta — and, seeing as how he was able to invoke Staley's spirit better than the rest, one thing led to another, until, at the tail end of the decade, the reformed band unexpectedly found itself in the studio releasing new material under the name of Alice of Chains.

Formally, I suppose, they have a right to do that. After all, Cantrell was not only one of the foun­ding members, but he wrote ninety percent of the music and a good share of the lyrics, not to mention being responsible for most of the band's musical evolution. So, if Black Gives Way To Blue does not sound anything like Dirt or Tripod, this does not imply that the first thing to do is run to the office and change the name. Besides, it does sound closer to Dirt than Sgt. Pepper sounds to Please Please Me.

But we all have our rights, don't we? They have a right to keep calling themselves Alice In Chains — and I have a right to proclaim that this album is a pile of dreck. Add to this your, the reader's, right to follow this up by saying that I am an idiot that should go back to his Barry Manilow collection, and we have all done a great job of asserting our individual freedom and making the world a happy, progressive place.

In all honesty, Black Gives Way To Blue is a fine, subtle title, but I'd rather prefer it didn't. The band does do everything possible to ensure that the record is not simply an exercise in nostalgia, nor is it a commercial trap or a dishonest cash-in on the respectable band name. The music is bru­tally heavy; from a technical point — heavier than Dirt, and undoubtedly much louder. If seen from that point of view, progression is obvious. Yet the musical structures themselves are unfo­cused, going for atmosphere rather than original melodicity. Where Jerry comes up with a really good riff, he rams it into the ground for about five or six minutes, until you start breathing it out like tobacco smoke; and where the songs are shorter, he usually does not come up with a really good riff, no matter how hard I try to convince myself that he does.

I think we need not go much further than the first track to have this understood. The three chords that open the song, you are going to hear a lot of them — they do not go away until the song clocks in at 4:42, and, although there is more stuff happening melodically in between, the back­bone of the performance is more boring than any single Alice In Chains song from the band's glory days. A fine way to start your new album where you are going to have something to prove!

If Tripod could be, with reservations, pigeonholed as «sludge metal», Black Gives Way To Blue is probably closer to «stoner rock» — hypnotic, mid-tempo songs that roll along in a loud, aggre­ssive musical haze, all deep heavy drones and wave-like power chords. That's all right, as long as the haze has a face, that is, can be distinguished from a million other similar hazes. But somehow, somewhere, Cantrell just seems to have lost it. There are occasional flashes of the old genius, but most of them have to do with punch rather than atmosphere: for instance, at 2:43 into 'Acid Bubble', when that chugging, crushing riff emerges from under the rubble and gives you a serious jolt — only to disappear back into the rubble a few seconds later.

The greatest, most active disappointment, however, one that I believe may be trigerring the rest of them, is the singing. To put it bluntly, there is no singing on the record. None whatsoever. None of the songs are instrumentals, and yet it would perhaps have been better, had they all been instru­mentals. Lead vocals are handled mainly by Cantrell himself, sometimes singing in unison with DuVall, but they just have zero presence. Zero. They hit the notes, get across their boring, insigni­ficant lyrical points, and disappear with no emotional response at all. What are they sin­ging about? Pain? Hatred? Disillusionment? Desperation? I have no idea, nor do I strive to get one. I only wonder if this all happens because they are so overshadowed by the loudness of the guitars — or if they intentionally hide behind that loudness to mask this emotional hollowness.

Maybe it differs on different songs. For 'Check My Brain', for instance, Cantrell manages to in­vent a killer riff, probably the best on the album, trickily warped and bent so as to disorient and confuse the mind, yet utterly and immediately memorable. It is a riff that deserves a great vocal melody to go along with it, but do they have one? Nope, it's as if they have not even looked for it. That is most definitely not how it used to be. On the other hand, nothing could have saved a song like 'Private Hell', the very definition of generic, formulaic grunge where loudness is pretty much the only thing that matters. We've all lived through this a thousand times already — why go on wasting our time?

Personally, I propose that Jerry Cantrell (a) say goodbye to this DuVall guy — no hard feelings, but the two do not really need each other; (b) go back to his solo career and, if possible, forget about things like distortion and volume, because if there are any tunes on here that have given me honest, simple pleasure, it is the bits of acoustic material: 'When The Sun Rose Again' and the title track (with no less than Elton John guest-starring on piano!) are touching melancholic bits in the vein of Jerry's «lighter» tunes on Jar Of Flies. Even the folk-rocker 'Your Decision', plumper and more saturated with instrumentation, packs the right atmosphere into the right container.

This is ground for optimism — Cantrell has not really run out of ideas, he has merely enslaved them under the supervision of the overall concept, namely, that this new band somehow has to live up to its old fame. The day he understands that he is, in fact, not obliged to prove anything, is the day when we will really see a nice true follow-up to the original Alice In Chains legacy. This record, unfortunately, is just a misguided dud. It's heavy all right, but so was Jon Brower Min­noch, and I am afraid the album will have an even shorter lifespan than he did. Thumbs down, except for the acoustic songs and that killer riff from 'Check My Brain'. Steal it, someone!

Alice In Chains: Unplugged

ALICE IN CHAINS: UNPLUGGED (1996)

1) Nutshell; 2) Brother; 3) No Excuses; 4) Sludge Factory; 5) Down In A Hole; 6) Angry Chair; 7) Rooster; 8) Got Me Wrong; 9) Heaven Beside You; 10) Would; 11) Frogs; 12) Over Now; 13) Killer Is Me.

The popular music scene presents you with plenty of opportunities to hear and watch dead people perform, but Alice In Chains' Unplugged probably takes the cake. It is a recording worth owning, but it does not produce nearly as strong an impression without the image of Layne Staley's blood-shot eyes blankly staring into space. Emotions still run wild deep within him, and his voice is as powerful at expressing them as before, but he has no ability whatsoever to display them visually, singing from within a sealed sarcophagus. That, my friends, is truly scary.

It is not too clear why the band agreed to do the MTV ritual in the first place. They held no tour to support Tripod — Layne was clearly indisposed — and the idea was probably that if Nirvana could have gotten away with something like that, why not Alice? Particularly since the band was no foe to acoustic music, having already released two almost completely acoustic EPs. They do, in fact, play two songs from Sap and two from Jar Of Flies — but then it would have been bo­ring and predictable had they simply decided to stick to their original acoustic material, so they try to be more creative by rearranging some heavy numbers as well.

It all works. The songs may lose their crunch, but not a single one loses its point. One could guess the sludge metal of Tripod would be impossible to reforge in a distortion-free manner — one would be wrong, because 'Sludge Factory' and 'Frogs' trudge along with the same sense of doom (the only problem with the former is that Layne forgets some of the lyrics and they have to end it about three minutes too early), just not as heavy on the ear. Which, by the way, makes Unplug­ged the perfect choice to introduce Alice In Chains to people with zero tolerance for heavy me­tal — not sure if it is possible to make them perform the transition to Dirt from then on, but it is at least one more opportunity to spread the word about the genius of this band.

The centerpoint, both chronologically and metaphorically, is, I think, the inspired performance of 'Rooster'. For the most part, they stay away from their most aggressive rockers — no 'Them Bones' or 'We Die Young' or 'Godsmack'; 'Rooster' is the closest they get to their standard heights of fury, and Layne's opening 'Ain't found a way to kill me yet...' tingles my spine every time I hear it. There goes something big and pretentious, something formally non-related to the singer's problems, but if we did not have the correct information that the song was written about Jerry Cantrell's dad's Vietnam experience, would there be a single chance of us not associating it with Layne's own plight? In fact, even now that we have the information, does it not sound like it is all about Staley? 'Seems every path leads me to nowhere'? Vietnam my ass. Watch the video, look at this guy taking it. There's death in his voice, death in his eyes — his own death. It's terrifying, and yet there is something diabolically seductive about all this. Maybe no one would like to go like Layne Staley — decomposing from overdosing — but quite a few people would subconsciously want to be like Layne Staley on that stage, hypnotically drilling the lines of 'Rooster' into the ears of a (sometimes visibly shaken) audience.

Correcting the balance a little, let us not forget that Staley is not the only stage presence. Cantrell plays excellent guitar throughout, with the additional help of second guitarist Scott Olson, and Mike Inez lays down strong basslines as well as injects a little humor in the proceedings: the video shows the inscription 'Friends Don't Let Friends Get Friends Haircuts' on his bass, most pro­bably an amicable stab at Metallica, and he also plays the intro to 'Enter Sandman' at one point — for no particular reason.

This may not be essential Alice In Chains listening, but its importance is not merely historical (as in, «the last Alice In Chains album with Staley still alive», etc.); it builds up their acoustic legacy and it gives you the band on a more intimate level, which, in the light of Staley's condition, turns into a strange twist on a spiritual séance. A deranged thumbs up.

Alice In Chains: Alice In Chains

ALICE IN CHAINS: ALICE IN CHAINS (1995)

1) Grind; 2) Brush Away; 3) Sludge Factory; 4) Heaven Beside You; 5) Head Creeps; 6) Again; 7) Shame In You; 8) God Am; 9) So Close; 10) Nothin' Song; 11) Frogs; 12) Over Now.

Sometimes lovingly called Tripod by the fans due to its cheerful album cover, depicting a world-weary dog with three legs on the front cover. For that matter, there is also a man with three legs on the back, but most people prefer to pay attention to the dog — probably since the dog fits in so well with the overall mood of the record, whereas the three-legged man only adds confusion.

And that mood cannot even be called «depressing». «Depression», after all, is a sort of human condition, an emotional state that can be transmitted from one person to another or, in exceptional cases, transmutated into an art form. The songs on Alice In Chains, on the other hand, go way be­yond this, in that they are purged of emotion, kind of like the actors in a Robert Bresson movie had been purged of acting by their director. If Facelift and particularly Dirt represented the ago­nizing stage, the victim lashing and thrashing in meaningless, but terrifying, fury, Tripod is the paralysis stage — there is still some occasional limb twitching, but mostly the victim just stares into space with beady eyes, hardly capable of caring about anything any longer.

Genre-wise, the record has frequently been categorized as a form of «sludge metal», an associa­tion that is hard to bypass considering that one of the songs is even called 'Sludge Factory'. I am nowhere near close to being an expert on sludge metal, but certainly Tripod bears only a superfi­cial resemblance to the likes of Eyehategod and their brethren, due to Cantrell trading in the me­tallic crunch of his essentially pop riffs for a more complex, less accessible mix of crackling, noi­sy rhythm tracks and downer vibratos. But the proverbial sludge metal I have heard, ranging from truly impressive to utterly corny, makes you want to thrash, break, and kill (in the best of cases — the very jerks who are playing it). Tripod, however, makes you want to be thrashed, broken, and killed, and the sooner the better.

I cannot bring myself to memorize most of the songs, even though some are quite long ('Sludge Factory' clocks in at 7:12, and 'Frogs' overdoes it by one more minute). Yet I cannot forget the overall effect. In terms of absolute heaviness, these melodies do not manage to beat Dirt; but the length, and the «droning» effect of most of them, can wreck the listener's nerves far quicker. And if the songs proper do not do their job well, the extended codas will quickly mop up whatever tra­ces of life are still preserved. The creepiest of these is the doom-drenched ending of 'Frogs', re­plete with calm, creepy, ad-libbed delirium from Staley: '...off the wall I scraped... you... I gotta wake... it comes this way... to drown this ache... hate... never gonna fuck with me again... man's own clean slate... don't fuck with me again... makes your eyes dilate... makes you shake...'

Actually, Layne does not even sing all that much; most of the time he just recites the lyrics, and when he does sing, he usually goes for the simplest notes and patterns, or sings in unison with Cantrell. But it is not as if he were disinvolved: on the contrary, he wrote most of the lyrics, and plays just as central a part on the record as before. He simply plays himself — the Layne Staley of this record is probably very much like the real Layne Staley who was, at the same time, enter­ing the last phase of his living nightmare. Even the few songs where he tries to raise his voice, such as the powerful 'Again', it is like witnessing the helpless anger of somebody bound hand and foot, unable to make a single movement and simply going crazy in the head.

Few people will want to listen to this record frequently. To be able to use it as background music, one would have to be an experienced neurosurgeon, and as for concentrated listening, once is enough to understand its power and significance, twice is enough to prove to yourself that your nervous system is working fine, but thrice will be pushing it. It does have a few «breathers» pla­ced in strategic points. The ballad 'Heaven Beside You', continuing the softer line of Cantrell's art as seen before on Jar Of Flies, is beautiful, and the album does not close with the death rattle of 'Frogs', but rather with the light, catchy pop-rock of 'Over Now', with Staley offering a half-hear­ted consolation to the listener: 'Yeah, it's over now, but I can breathe somehow... Guess it's over now, but I seem alive somehow'. Not for long, Layne, not for long.

Tripod does not, and should not, exist on its own; it is a fitting conclusion for the trilogy that began with the battle between life and death on Facelift, continued with death triumphant on Dirt, and now suitably ends with a detailed gloating over the coffins. But each part of the trilogy per­formed its duties as best as it could, and even if Tripod is not the most alluring part of it — how could it even hope to be? — it is the perfect conclusion, and the heart of the listener can grieve over it with the same passion with which the brain is able to rejoice at its marvelous conception and execution. Thumbs up, no question about it.

Alice In Chains: Jar Of Flies

ALICE IN CHAINS: JAR OF FLIES (1994)

1) Rotten Apple; 2) Nutshell; 3) I Stay Away; 4) No Excuses; 5) Whale & Wasp; 6) Don't Follow; 7) Swing On This.

As early as the fall of 1991, the band demonstrated their flexibility by recording an EP called Sap that con­tained five acoustic songs — originally intended as demos for subsequent metallization, but then deemed self-sufficient as they were. (Technically, they were not entirely acoustic, with at least some electric guitar overdubs, but all the backbones remained acoustic). After Dirt, they de­cided to return to this practice, and the next EP, Jar Of Flies, already had seven songs, some of them lengthy enough to guarantee a running length over thirty minutes. For some reason, al­though this would seem an utterly natural thing to do, Sap and Jar Of Flies have yet to see a sin­gle-CD re-release, which would most likely prompt the curious music lover into adding it to his collection and gaining a new type appreciation for the band.

None of the songs are as immediately striking as the blitzkrieg of Dirt, but there is no reason why they should be. This is, finally, the moment when one should put some subtlety back into the proceedings, replace nervous breakdown with melancholia, follow the terrifying epileptic fit of Dirt with the quiet recuperative depression of Jar Of Flies. Not that things will get any easier; not a chance, as the very first track, suitably called 'Rotten Apple', tells you that 'Innocence is over, ignorance is spoken, confidence is broken, sustenance is stolen, arrogance is potent'. They will just get... subtler. Think of the difference between putting a bullet through your brain and la­zily and hazily gazing as the blood drips from your freshly opened veins. Whichever scenario looks more pacifying and relaxing to you?

Now, to bring you back from these unsettling thoughts, Jar Of Flies may be the best spot to check out Jerry Cantrell's amazing musical versatility. Some of this sounds a hell of a lot like James Taylor (!), e. g. the soft Fido-on-the-porchstep country-western rumination of 'Don't Fol­low' (actually sung by Jerry himself instead of Layne, giving the song extra accessibility). Some sounds like lounge jazz, e. g. 'Swing On This', propelled by new bassist Mike Inez's traditionalist rhythmics — before it starts justifying the title and mutates from 'swing' to nasty hard rock in its mid-section. And some sounds like mid-Seventies British progressive rock à la Camel and the like, e. g. the instrumental 'Whale & Wasp' with its deep, painful guitar moaning.

'Rotten Apple', occupying more space than anything else on here and, thus, intuitively understood as the album's major piece, is itself enhanced with a talkbox effect — which is, fortunately, just as creepy as it is on Pink Floyd records and not at all as silly as it is on Peter Frampton ones — and represents the perfect example of creative collaboration between Inez, responsible for the song's morose bassline pivot, Cantrell, fleshing it out with the ugly, but eerie talkbox, dark folk acoustic rhythms, and a set of other warped electric effects, and Staley, who somehow comes up with the perfect lyrics for it all: 'Eat of the apple, so young / I'm crawling back to start'. Come to think of it, not that we know how old Adam was himself when he tasted the fruit, so perhaps it is a bit too presumptious for Layne to equate his sins with those of the forefather — but it is not as if he sounded unocnvincing or something.

Jar Of Flies sold pretty well upon release, but, partly due to its shortness, partly due to its «aty­pical» portrayal of the band, has not managed to accumulate the same classic status as Facelift and Dirt. No surprise: in between the flashy and the subtle, we always tend to drift towards the flashy — at first, at least. But each and every fan of good music should check it out, not to men­tion that many people who cannot stand heavy brutal rock because of blood group incompatibi­lity will find Jar Of Flies a much more natural way to appreciate and enjoy the greatness of Alice in Chains. Thumbs up from every direction — what a brave, scary, talented band.

Alice In Chains: Dirt

ALICE IN CHAINS: DIRT (1992)

1) Them Bones; 2) Dam That River; 3) Rain When I Die; 4) Down In A Hole; 5) Sickman; 6) Rooster; 7) Junkhead; 8) Dirt; 9) God Smack; 10) Untitled (Iron Gland); 11) Hate To Feel; 12) Angry Chair; 13) Would?

Intellect, as soon as we acquire it to a sufficient degree, tells us that the ultimate form of «scary» is «subtle»; that properly done «suspense» is far more nerve-wrecking than in-yer-face horror and brutality; and that this works for all sorts of art, from literature to movies to music. Exceptions to this rule are few and in between — particularly in the world of rock'n'roll, where one oddball al­bum by madman Syd Barrett can easily outscare the entire output of any death metal band. But exceptions do occur, and, whenever I think of them, Dirt by Alice In Chains is the one example that springs to mind quicker than any other one.

Digging deep under the surface of Facelift, you could still smell traces of the lightweight hedo­nism of Eighties' metal, especially in its funkier numbers. On Dirt, Cantrell and Staley wipe these out to the last tiny spot. If there is one second of «light» on this record, it is a small fourty-second long interlude that now goes under the title 'Iron Gland' (it used to be altogether anonymous) — a collage of heavy riffs, shouts, and noises that sort of pays tribute to/mocks Black Sabbath's 'Iron Man'. Equally as heavy and brutal as the rest of the record, it is intentionally silly. And nothing else on Dirt is silly.

At the forefront of Dirt lies the drug problem: around half of the songs deal with it explicitly or implicitly, with Cantrell contributing the gloomy melodies and Staley describing his addiction with lyrics that may not be great poetry, but nor do they need to be great poetry when placed in their particular context. For instance, 'what in God's name have you done — stick your arm for some real fun!' has little poetic might all by itself, but is deeply empowered through Layne's deli­very — somehow you know he is not singing about somebody else — and Cantrell's nightmarish, «wobbly» wah-wah riff, the perfect musical impersonation of all that horrid muck circulating through your blood.

The most evil irony lies in how catchy all this stuff is. Twelve songs with excellent rock melodies — memorable riffs, catchy choruses, suitable song length, moderate amount of complexity. If only those were run through a different framework, Brill Building might have been glad to keep some of those. My only minor complaint is that, the farther we proceed, the more obvious is the band's way too heavy reliance on Black Sabbath and Zeppelin: the title track, for instance, bor­rows parts of its melody from 'Electric Funeral', and Staley's 'Hate To Feel' reworks the famous descending riff from 'Dazed And Confused'. Nevertheless, these are really reworkings rather than straightforward rip-offs, and what can there be against a little variation on a good theme?

Launching straight into battle with another short, compact (2:30) single, cheerfully entitled 'Them Bones' where Staley impressively plays the Hamlet of the grunge generation, the band proceeds to box the listener into the corner with one brutal punch after another. 'Dam That River', written by Cantrell after getting into a fight with drummer Sean Kinney, is essentially about venting one's frustration, but I would certainly hate someone venting his frustration over me with the kind of force contained in the song's riffs — this is some of the meanest, leanest, earth-rattling-est riffage ever put on record by anyone. The wah-wah riff of 'Rain When I Die' is the purest distillation of evil, and 'Sickman' was the result of Staley asking Cantrell to write him 'the sickest tune he could write' — personally, I think 'Rain When I Die' is sicker, but that is just a matter of opinion.

The album does have its moments of silence and subtlety that also work beautifully: 'Rooster', be­ginning with mildly psychedelic phasing on the acoustic guitars and falsetto harmonies, only gra­dually develops into a disturbed, terrifying picture of Vietnamese hell. Not that one requires to know that Cantrell wrote the song about his father's wartime experiences; it could as well refer to Staley himself, because, as he wails 'here comes The Rooster — you know he ain't gonna die!' through your speakers, it is possible to get the feeling that, perhaps, despite all the nightmarish at­mosphere, there may be hope ahead. Is he, or ain't he? But then the very next song is 'Junkhead': 'What's my drug of choice? — Well, what have you got?' No, he probably ain't.

Dirt may be «metal» or «grunge», but, first and foremost, it is simply one of the Nineties' greatest works of pure art, a straightforward depiction of inner torture and helplessness, an attempt at a screaming public confession that sends modesty and subtlety packing — with no regrets. Not eve­ryone is going to like it. Some will shy away from its brutality under the pretext of disliking hea­vy metal in general. Others will want to denounce its honesty as banal self-pitying. Some may say that it serves a purely pragmatic purpose of turning people off drugs; others may say that people are just as likely to be turned onto drugs, seduced by Staley's romantic torture. And they are all welcome to say it: Dirt is a record to be talked about, to be discussed for as long as possible, and the more controversy it stirs, the better it is. And yes, a big thumbs up from the very bottom of my conscience, which has never had any problems with drugs but which has been forced to relate through the sheer unprecedented power of the album.

Alice In Chains: Facelift

ALICE IN CHAINS: FACELIFT (1990)

1) We Die Young; 2) Man In The Box; 3) Sea Of Sorrow; 4) Bleed The Freak; 5) I Can't Remember; 6) Love, Hate, Love; 7) It Ain't Like That; 8) Sunshine; 9) Put You Down; 10) Confusion; 11) I Know Somethin' ('Bout You); 12) Real Thing.

On beginner level, one could define grunge as «pop melodies, punk attitude, Black Sabbath tone» and mostly hit it right. But Alice In Chains, despite embracing this aesthetics wholesale, actually had roots in Eighties' metal and funk — roots that went back at least four or five years — and this gave them a mature, professional edge over most competition. Vocalist Layne Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell were just as pissed-off and fucked-up as Kurt Cobain, just as talented, but they also knew how to throw around their skills so as to consistently come out with some of the scariest music to ever come out of the pop music scene.

Facelift, the band's stunning debut, is as much death metal as it is grunge — in fact, Cantrell has always stated that the band was primarily metal — but certainly not «fantasy-death» metal, not a corny dramatization of some semi-deranged artist's brain damage, rather a faithful depiction of whatever was going around, from Staley's personal drug experiences to observations on true life atrocities ('We Die Young', for instance, is said to reflect Cantrell's impressions of ten-year old drug pushers on the streets of Seattle).

So what happened, exactly? Nothing much. One fine day, hair metal woke up with a strange de­sire to take an honest peek behind its made-to-order screen of hedonism and irony — to look at the other side of all those carnal and spiritual pleasures it had been celebrating for so long now, it even forgot when it all started. That auspicious day, hair metal became Alice In Chains.

Facelift gives no respite: one heavy rocker after another, sometimes moving on slow and painful, like junkies crawling on the floor during their last moments of consciousness, sometimes relent­lessly, steadily mid-tempo, like the hand of Death reaching over the junkies — not too slow, not too fast, but just right — and inavoidably. Sometimes Cantrell softens the proceedings with ligh­ter, acoustic-based passages, but this never changes the general depressing atmosphere. As for Staley, he only knows two moods: The Growl, which will send little kids straight under their beds, and The Moan, which will send the neighbors dialing the drug squad number. Do we want more? What for? They would not be honest, and honesty is Facelift's banner.

With several years of previous collective experience, a fresh, original vibe, and songwriting, sin­ging, and playing talent a-plenty, it would be surprising if Facelift had plenty of bad songs to go along with it, and it does not. The three major stunners, all of which were hit singles, are tacked at the beginning — 'We Die Young', embodying all the basics of worldly evil in a compact 2:30 pa­ckage; 'Man In The Box', the song that Cantrell acknowledges as the first «true Alice In Chains» song the band wrote, and which also has the most achingly overwhelming invocation of the Lord's name I have ever heard in pop; and 'Sea Of Sorrow', whose point is essentially to proclaim that there is no stronger thing in the world than total suicidal desperation. 'I live tomorrow / You I will not follow / As you wallow / In a sea of sorrow' — strange that the song has never played a part in high school shoot-outs. Probably too smart for that.

If you have the strength to sit out everything, you will later on be treated to Cantrell's acoustic capacities ('I Can't Remember'), a couple tracks that sit closer to their hair metal beginnings ('Sun­shine'), and some funky numbers that are almost danceable ('Put You Down', 'I Know Some­thin'), if you like dancing with ghosts, that is. The «sleeper» of the album is its longest number, the dramatic aria of 'Love, Hate, Love', a death metal ballad with Staley giving it his all (and he is a pretty powerful singer); at first, it may be somewhat tiresome to watch it draw its weighty, poi­sonous bulk over your living room (I should certainly know — I trashed it in my original review. Silly silly), but eventually the fumes will sink in, and, for safety reasons, I would certainly re­commend them over their real-world equivalent (a 24-hour stay in an opium den or something to the same power).

Heavy with a flair, honest with an intelligence, Facelift is one of Seattle's finest hours, and will always remain a thumbs up record as long as there are enough thumbs to go with it. It is nothing less than amazing that they actually managed to top it with their next offering.