Alice In Chains - Living and Dying in Seattle

Alice In Chains were, for better or worse, one of the most influential bands of the 90s. They forged a highly distinctive sound built on metallic guitars and alienating vocal melodies, one that would go on to be imitated by a whole host of bands in the years that followed; all of whom, however, would lack some essential qualities: the sincerity in setting real, deep-seated malaise to music, a compositional flair as refined as Jerry Cantrell's and, above all, a voice as unique and unforgettable as Layne Staley's. Some argue that Alice In Chains were simply skilled at riding the grunge wave, but with hindsight it's hard not to acknowledge the authenticity and the sheer scale of their talent.

First steps

The band formed in Seattle in 1987, out of the merger of two street-glam metal bands: Alice 'N Chains and Diamond Lie, the former fronted by singer Layne Staley, the latter led by guitarist Jerry Cantrell. When Staley joined Cantrell's outfit, along with bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney, the new band began to slowly shift course, evolving their sound away from the typical hard-glam of the era toward something different, while still remaining, for the time being, on the fringes of the "new wave" that was turning Seattle into a creative hub on the verge of exploding worldwide.

While at that time Nirvana were operating in territory close to hardcore-punk, while Soundgarden moved between Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, while Mudhoney were hardcore purists, Alice In Chains crafted a style rooted in more mainstream metal canons, pushing its claustrophobic side to the extreme, slowing the beats down, making the tones utterly bleak, almost harking back to the dark/goth tradition. The band shaped their sound around the sulfurous qualities of Staley's voice, which could astonish listeners despite lacking an extraordinary range or particularly polished technique.

After recording some demos (with Rick Parashar, producer of "Ten"), the debut album Facelift arrived in August 1990 on Columbia — a major label right from the start, proof of just how closely the record industry was watching Seattle's independent scene, which would explode the following year thanks to "Nevermind". Facelift is not an entirely mature record, alternating thrilling moments with others — mostly in the second half — that are decidedly superfluous, if not downright embarrassing: "Put You Down" or the funk-tinged "I Know Something About You" are episodes still tied to certain clichés of the previous decade, destined to leave no legacy. Still, the list of memorable tracks is already considerable, starting with the tremendous opening one-two punch: the powerful, short and incisive "We Die Young" — a sadly prophetic title, already released on a promo EP a month earlier — and the syncopated, epic "Man In The Box". Monolithic, steamrolling rock, no holds barred. The blueprint of the Alice In Chains sound is only sketched out here, but already evident: Cantrell's guitar, thick, scorching and always front and center, and Staley's voice (on this first record at the height of his youthful fury, not yet perfectly focused in terms of expressiveness, but capable of tremendously powerful vocal runs) tracing hallucinated melodies or screaming explosions of rage. “I’m a man in the box/ buried in my pit/ won’t you come and save me?”, is Layne's desperate cry for help, the one hiding, behind his cursed-poet mask, the nature of a (too) sensitive young man unable to adapt to the world. Proof of this can also be found in his behavior once offstage, when, in open contrast with the bleakness of his music, he turned into a genuine jester — and indeed all four members of the band were always driven by a strong streak of irony away from the spotlight.

Layne thus began to play the mask of the sad clown of the fin de siècle. It was in this period, as success swept over the band and the pressure on four guys barely in their twenties became overwhelming, that hard drugs entered the picture, leaving an indelible mark on the most emotionally vulnerable of them, Staley himself. Returning to the music, at least one more track from Facelift deserves mention: the long, dreamlike, crushingly heavy "Love, Hate, Love", in which, over a tempo bordering on stasis, a sinister arpeggio and a funereal vocal recount words of despondency, solitude and rage, exploding in the finale into a scream that, rather than being cathartic, implodes in on itself, leaving behind a sense of deathly anguish. Staley's vocal power is staggering here, and the harmony built on semitones fully conveys the sense of despair. The poetics of Alice In Chains come sharply into focus, drawing equally on the funereal gloom of Ian Curtis and the furious power of Black Sabbath, fusing metal, dark/goth, rock, and a diseased streak of pop.

Despite its flaws, Facelift proved a sizable success, becoming the first album from the Seattle scene to go gold, and eventually selling more than two million copies in the US alone. Alice In Chains toured with Iggy Pop, Van Halen, Poison and Extreme, boosting their popularity further. Striking while the iron was hot, in February 1992 the band put out an EP, but rather than deliver a follow-up along the same lines as what they'd just produced, Cantrell and company opted for four stripped-down, folk-leaning acoustic songs. Sap pairs a certain taste for the grotesque with a love of melody, and while it can't be called a masterpiece, it's an enjoyable little record.

The EP opens with "Brother", a psychedelic dirge in which the voices of Staley and Cantrell (who was increasingly backing the lead vocalist, turning vocal harmonies into a genuine trademark of their sound) trace out Eastern-tinged arabesques. "Got Me Wrong" is a slow acoustic funk number with a howled chorus; the playful "Right Turn", credited to the improbable "Alice Mudgarden", hides amused vocal cameos from Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) and Mark Arm (Mudhoney) (the resemblance between the three voices in the lower-middle register is striking); the ghostly "Am I Inside" is a funeral chant for male voice, female voice (Ann Wilson, of Heart) and arpeggiated guitar.

In 1992 Alice In Chains appeared in Cameron Crowe's film "Singles", an affectionate postcard of Seattle at the time. The band plays itself performing live in a club and contributes "Would?" — one of their biggest hits — to the film's soundtrack. The video for "Would?" would go on to win Best Video from a Film at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards.

The masterpiece arrives: Dirt

Meanwhile Nirvana had become Nirvana, and Seattle the epicenter of world music: it was time to reap what had been sown, and Alice gave birth to their masterpiece, steeped in such bleakness and anguish that only the hype of those years could have turned it into a multi-million-selling success. No sooner do you hit play than a wall of guitars and an anguished scream come crashing down on the listener, grabbing them by the throat and hurling them into an abyss of decadent, morbid metallic heaviness, of unprecedented psychological and sonic violence. The anguished, tormented anthem "Them Bones", two minutes and thirty seconds of lucid despair, opens the best-selling Alice In Chains record, Dirt, released on September 29, 1992. Enormous, scorching guitars, a perfect balance between sonic clarity and power, an odd-time 7/8 signature, and a voice embodying the scream of a desperate generation, the cry of a man abandoned to the mercy of ghosts turned real. "I believe / them bones are me" Staley opens with his nasal, sulfurous vocal, paired with Cantrell's more conventional one — vocal interplay that could have been dreamed up by the Beatles, had they been severely depressed heroin addicts.

Dirt grants no respite: once the first track closes abruptly, almost folding in on itself, the square, violent rock of "Dam That River" explodes, devastating thanks to a superb vocal performance, followed by the psycho-stoner trip of "Rain When I Die", over six minutes in 6/4 time, with Staley at the peak of his expressiveness and vocal power. "Sickman" removes any remaining doubt: a percussive, fast, violent verse with a raw, screamed vocal is set against a chorus bordering on the morbidly conceivable, an illegitimate offspring of "Love, Hate, Love", slowed down to an almost unbearable crawl, built on a dissonant, distorted arpeggio and cradled by a voice intoning a dark dirge ("I can see the end is getting near/... ah, what's the difference, I'll die in this sick world of mine"). There is no hope of redemption.

"Rooster", a song Cantrell dedicated to his father's experience in Vietnam, is an unexpected, sudden oasis of calm, at least for the first few minutes: the gentle guitar arpeggio conceals the brutality of the lyrics ("Ain't found a way to kill me yet... seems every path leads me to nowhere"), until the chorus bursts into a sonic explosion where Staley once again astonishes with his power and passion. From here on it's a genuine descent into the abyss: the next five tracks trace out the ideal trajectory toward that point of no return that a mind and body can reach when ravaged by drugs. Drugs are Staley's demon, in them he finds refuge from the world and from his own anguish at being alive, a terrible and irreversible pain. "Junkhead" depicts the initial phase of the fall, set to a lopsided, heavy riff, punctuated by one of the record's most melodic and powerful choruses, where Layne intones his own ode to abuse with a Velvet Underground-like flavor ("If you let yourself go and opened your mind I bet you'd be using like me, and it ain't so bad"). "Dirt", the title track, rests on a very slow, Arabic-tinged riff: euphoria was but a brief breath of air, already gone, replaced by anguish ("I want you to kill me and dig me under, I wanna live no more"). "Godsmack", a transitional piece in terms of the conceptual sequence, is nonetheless musically very interesting, faster and more "rock" than the tracks surrounding it, made unique by a chilling vocal performance that perfectly conveys the feelings of an addict in crisis, complete with vocal tremors and ensuing delirium. Preceded by a brief instrumental interlude, haunted by the devilish laugh of a Tom Araya borrowed from Slayer, comes "Hate To Feel", a distorted, ferocious blues dripping with acidity, featuring a beautiful Hendrix-esque solo from a Cantrell now fully matured on his instrument. Finally "Angry Chair", a masterpiece of paranoia in musical form, a verse that weaponizes apathy to shatter what's left of the listener's mental clarity, battering them with a monotone melody, a hypnotic vocal enriched with delay and effects to make it even more unsettling, and a falsely consoling chorus that in truth sings of final surrender to inescapable ruin.

There's still room for one more oasis of melody, in some ways the absolute peak of the record, a song of death and abandonment that, while not directly tied to the "concept" just concluded, serves as its ideal final act. It's "Down In A Hole", an apocalyptic ballad where the interplay between Cantrell's and Staley's voices reaches the height of pathos: "Bury me softly in this womb" is the opening prayer, "I've eaten the sun and my tongue has been burnt of the taste" is the admission of guilt from a desolate man facing his own fate. Five minutes of achingly sweet melodies and walls of guitar: a genuine masterpiece. The record could end here, but Alice chose to close it out with a song written earlier than all the others, already familiar to audiences for its use in the soundtrack of the aforementioned Cameron Crowe film "Singles": "Would?", an alt-rock track of tremendous melodic and emotional impact, is the final word on the preceding disintegration, the definitive declaration of surrender even where there might be a will to redemption, because solitude forecloses any healing ("If I would, could you?").

Dirt would go on to sell four million copies in the US alone, staying on the Billboard charts for a full two years, turning Alice In Chains into bona fide global superstars; their appearance at the 1994 Lollapalooza (which would be Layne Staley's last tour) also rewarded them on the live front, where – at the expense of the precision and sonic care heard on their studio work – sheer power and ferocity won out. Drug abuse problems were starting to become more serious: bassist Mike Starr was forced to leave the band, replaced by Mike Inez, already a veteran of Ozzy Osbourne's band.

In April 1993, the first two excellent tracks recorded with the new bassist, "What The Hell Have I?" (a sped-up "Dirt" that spills into an epic-toned chorus) and "A Little Bitter" (which anticipates the sound that would become typical of "nu-metal" a few years later), ended up on the soundtrack of the film "Last Action Hero".

Among the giants of Grunge

The follow-up to Dirt, released in January 1994, was another semi-acoustic EP, this time at the opposite end of the spectrum from the restraint of Sap. The sound is dense with almost baroque arrangements, layered vocal overdubs, guitars, strings and percussion. Titled Jar Of Flies, it's among the quartet's finest releases, even if light years away from the band's more natural habitat of distorted guitar walls. Seven tracks, many of them of unmatched brilliance, from the sickly blues of the opener "Rotten Apple", with its languid, dreamlike pace, to the acoustic intimacy of "Nutshell": four minutes of pure musical poetry, a three-bar progression built from just two chords, E minor and C, a memorable solo in the finale, and lyrics that send chills down your spine. “My gift of self is praved/ My privacy is raped/ And yet I find repeating in my head/ if I can’t be my own I’d feel better dead”. Next comes the epic, fairy-tale-like "I Stay Away", vaguely reminiscent of certain prog sounds, followed by the perfectly decadent pop of "No Excuses", the country melancholy that spills into gospel on "Don't Follow", the playful "Swing On This", and the instrumental embroidery of "Whale & Wasp", in which Cantrell's guitars seem to paint a sunset.

The band's trademark is now, more than ever, the technique of "layering" multiple vocal takes, sometimes split between Staley and Cantrell ("No Excuses"), but increasingly the work of Layne alone, overdubbing three or four vocal tracks at times unusual intervals, making the overall sound unmistakable. This makes it much harder for him to show off his interpretive skills (though these are still evident on the less elaborate tracks in this respect, like "Nutshell" or the ending of "Don't Follow"), but the effect of alienation and disorientation is pushed to its furthest extreme, and on songs built from fairly conventional harmonies and arrangements, the result is unusual to say the least. Staley's overdubbed voices are the voices of three, a hundred, a thousand men, all identical and all surrendered before their own fears, an end-of-millennium gospel, a desperate song of modern-day slaves.

Jar Of Flies, written and recorded in a single week in one go, debuted straight at number 1 on the Billboard Top 200, becoming the first EP in history to achieve such a feat, and the first Alice In Chains release to top the sales charts. But Staley's drug addiction problems were becoming truly serious, and the band suffered its first major setback, forced to cancel the tour planned for summer 1994. Staley began a path toward detox that, sadly, would never manage to free him from his enslavement to heroin.

But a small glimmer of hope flickered on, right as persistent rumors were writing the band off as finished. It was Staley himself who resurfaced first, with the side project Mad Season, a supergroup featuring guitarist Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, drummer Barret Martin of Screaming Trees and bassist John Baker Saunders of Walkabouts. Staley sang and created the artwork; the band played a series of shows, and on March 14, 1995 released an intense and beautiful one-off album of acid, psychedelic blues, Above, which also featured two guest appearances by Mark Lanegan. Over time, Above would come to be recognized as one of the essential records of the Seattle sound, and in 2013 it was celebrated with an unmissable remastered edition, featuring the cover "I Do Not Wanna Be A Soldier" and four further tracks that were meant to be part of a second album that never saw the light of day. This lavish deluxe edition also includes the live recording of a 1995 concert and its accompanying DVD.

The inevitable breakup

Just as the prospect of a breakup seemed to be taking hold, on November 7, 1995 the band's third album surprised everyone, simply titled Alice In Chains, though also known as "Tripod" because of the cover photo depicting a three-legged dog. It's a claustrophobic, experimental record (more in its songwriting than in its sound, which instead stays close to the band's classic wall-of-guitars approach, though generally with less impact, especially in the drum mix), even darker than its predecessor. Any trace of blues is abandoned, and "post"-influences are absorbed, even if hard rock still rules the roost. While musically the album falls slightly short of expectations, it's not short of excellent tracks (the opener "Grind", once again built on the band's beloved epic tones; the electric ballad "Shame In You", bolstered by a stirring melodic progression and some lovely guitar inventions from Cantrell; "Sludge Factory", granite-solid and instantly classic; the lengthy "Frogs", with an endless, lurching psychedelic coda; the single "Again"; and the lopsided "God Am"), and while vocally Staley's performance can no longer be said to match his past heights (the strain is evident, only partly masked by the usual sea of vocal overdubs – still very evocative, disorienting and distinctive, but increasingly a crutch to compensate for the difficulty of sustaining demanding melodies), this time it's the lyrics that truly shine.

Staley's songwriting maturity is now complete, giving him the ability to write verses in which, without abandoning rhyme or meter, ideas and words reach remarkable depths, from despondent curses (“Dear God, how have you been, then? I’m not fine, fuck pretending/ all of this death you’re sending/ best throw some free heart mending/ Invite you in my heart, then/ when done, my sins forgiven?/ This god of mine relaxes/ world dies I still pay taxes” – "God Am") to bitter reflections on his own loneliness (“What does friend mean to you?/ a word so wrongfully abused/ are you like me, confused? All included but you alone” – "Frogs"). Jerry Cantrell also tries to carve out more space for himself, singing "Heaven Beside You" in full and handling the main vocals on two other tracks ("Grind", "Over Now"). The difference in charisma, however, is merciless toward Cantrell. Alice In Chains debuted straight at number 1 on the Billboard charts, and sales would eventually be certified double platinum in the United States. Despite the success achieved, the band decided not to undertake a promotional tour in support of the album, due to Staley's increasingly evident health problems.

The musical story of Alice In Chains effectively ends here. There was still room for a few rare live appearances, such as the four dates supporting Kiss's reunion tour in 1996, with a Staley who was a ghost of his former self, wrapped in a heavy black suit and motorcycle gloves, clinging to the mic stand, yet still vocally up to expectations. At the end of the final show, Staley was hospitalized following a heroin overdose.

On April 10, 1996, Alice In Chains had starred in a moving acoustic performance recorded for the MTV Unplugged series, in which they played many of their biggest hits along with the previously unreleased "Killer Is Me", sung by Cantrell. For the first time, the lineup was expanded to a fifth member, guitarist Scott Olson. In July of that same year, the performance was released both on record (MTV Unplugged, much loved by fans) and on DVD. A few compilations followed, featuring a couple of unreleased tracks, along with many interviews, including a now-famous one Layne gave to Rolling Stone, in which the singer opened up about his by-then incurable heroin addiction.

Also in 1996, the band performed on April 20 on the TV show Saturday Night Special (playing "Again") and on May 10 on Letterman's Late Show ("Again" and "We Die Young").

Jerry Cantrell, unable to carry on working with Staley, decided to launch his own solo career, which produced the well-received Boggy Depot (1998, Columbia, featuring Sean Kinney and Mike Inez) and the subsequent Degradation Trip (2002, Roadrunner). The latter was reissued at the end of that same year as a double limited edition, titled Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2.

Layne Staley began living as a recluse, leaving his Seattle condominium less and less often, especially after the death by overdose of his ex-girlfriend Demri Parrott on October 29, 1996. In October 1998, Staley reunited Alice In Chains to record two new songs, "Get Born Again" and "Died", which ended up on the box set Music Bank, released at the end of 1999 and containing 48 tracks, including rarities, demos and unreleased material. A shortened version was also released, with just 15 tracks, titled Nothing Safe: Best Of The Box. These were followed in 2000 by a live album (Live) and in 2001 by the successful compilation Greatest Hits.

Meanwhile, after years of rumors chasing his real state of health, on April 19, 2002 Layne Staley was found dead of an overdose in his Seattle home. He had been languishing in total isolation for months. His body was discovered two weeks after his death. A sad, miserable exit, far from the theatrical finality of the other (and more famous) Seattle icon's last desperate act. The final, inevitable bitter act of a desperate and (too) sincere life.

The second life of Alice In Chains

While Pearl Jam have always seemed unimaginable without Eddie Vedder's histrionic presence, or Soundgarden without Chris Cornell's voice, Alice In Chains would prove they could survive with dignity even without the Luciferian icon Layne Staley, thanks to having another top-class player in their ranks: Jerry Cantrell, the band's main songwriter as well as a skilled guitarist and singer. The band would indeed return to the stage fourteen years later, picking up exactly where things had left off. With Sean Kinney (drums) and Mike Inez (bass) confirmed in the rhythm section, Cantrell introduced the world to new singer William DuVall, whose vocal timbre closely recalled Staley's own.

Black Gives Way To Blue (2009) is a new beginning over which, from the very first notes of the opener "All Secrets Known", old Layne's spirit seems to hover, so much so that it feels like he himself is singing its incipit. If you're among those who discovered and came to appreciate Alice In Chains only through the famous Unplugged, here there's plenty to drink in from the crystal-clear waters of "Your Decision", "When The Sun Rose Again" and especially the closing title track, which features special guest Sir Elton John on piano.

While on "Check My Brain" the "new" Alice In Chains try to curry favor with a blatantly pop chorus, elsewhere the moods turn slow and dark (on "Acid Bubble") or lean toward metal ("A Looking In View", "Last Of My Kind"). The most satisfying results come in the middle ground, well represented by the enjoyable triptych "Lesson Learned" - "Take Her Out" - "Private Hell". Across 54 minutes that go by without too many jolts, the mood that made the band internationally famous is reaffirmed, avoiding any sudden change of course.

On March 8, 2011, death struck Alice In Chains once again: the body of the band's original bassist, Mike Starr, was found lifeless in a Salt Lake City residence. Starr had suffered serious heroin addiction problems in the past, to the point of being forced to leave the band in 1993, replaced by Mike Inez. Just a few days before his death he had been arrested by police on suspicion of possessing narcotics.

Having absorbed this new loss, Cantrell and co. continued down their recording path: in 2013 the transitional The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here added little to the band's story, but helped keep them firmly on tour around the globe.

On August 24, 2018 came the third act of Alice In Chains' second life: Rainier Fog, which delivers plenty of craft and emotions in dropper doses. Epic choruses, doubled vocals, granite-solid riffs, melodic openings, killer solos: the ingredients are always the same. The band bets everything on a hard rock transmuted into FM-ready American rock, well-crafted but at times plasticky ("Fly", "Never Fade"), chasing that radio airplay that risks turning them more into the new Boston than into a recontextualization of the heroes of "Would?". Then, sure, at times you jump in your seat at the striking resemblance - though by now it's hardly news - between Robert DuVall's voice and Layne Staley's, especially in the vocal lines that make "Deaf Ears Blind Eyes" and "So Far Under" the tracks closest to the sound (and vocal style) of the golden years.

Jerry Cantrell remains the main songwriter of a band that has sold over 35 million copies, but this time, for those who loved "Dirt" and "Facelift", the real reasons for interest are fewer than usual: plenty of energy but too much essentially harmless material. The aching ballads "Maybe" and "All I Am" try to soothe old longings, but they're carbon copies of ideas already recycled several times. The story of the 2018-vintage Alice In Chains is a bit faded: between memories of days gone by and tributes to fellow travelers lost too soon, Rainier Fog is recommendable mainly to those nostalgic for the early '90s.

*Contributions by Martina Vetrugno

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