Dirt is Alice in Chains' major artistic statement and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece. It's a primal, sickening howl from the depths of Layne Staley's heroin addiction, and one of the most harrowing concept albums ever recorded. Not every song on Dirt is explicitly about heroin, but Jerry Cantrell's solo-written contributions (nearly half the album) effectively maintain the thematic coherence - nearly every song is imbued with the morbidity, self-disgust, and/or resignation of a self-aware yet powerless addict. Cantrell's technically limited but inventive guitar work is by turns explosive, textured, and queasily disorienting, keeping the listener off balance with atonal riffs and off-kilter time signatures…
The big task for Alice in Chains on their 2009 comeback Black Gives Way to Blue was to prove they could carry on battered and bruised, missing Layne Staley but still in touch with their core. They had to demonstrate the band had a reason to exist, and Black Gives Way to Blue achieved this goal, paving the way for another record just like it. Enter The Devil Put the Dinosaurs Here, a record that is pretty close to identical to Black Gives Way to Blue in its sound, attack, and feel. Where it differs is in the latter, as the overall album feels lighter and, at times, the individual songs do, too. "Scalpel" flirts with the acoustic bones of Jar of Flies and also has perhaps the richest melody here, working as a song, not a grind…
Dispelling rumors of their demise due to Layne Staley's heroin addiction, Alice in Chains is a sonically detailed effort that ranks as their best-produced record, and its best moments are easily some of their most mature music. Alice in Chains relies less on metallic riffs and more on melody and texturally varied arrangements than the group's previous full-length albums, finally integrating some of the more delicate acoustic moods of their EPs. The lyrics deal with familiar AIC subject matter - despair, misery, loneliness, and disappointment - but in a more understated fashion, and the lyrics take on more uplifting qualities of toughness and endurance, which were missing from much of their previous work…
It's hard not to feel for Alice in Chains - all the guys in the band were lifers, all except lead singer Layne Staley, who never managed to exorcise his demons, succumbing to drug addiction in 2002. Alice in Chains stopped being a going concern long before that, all due to Staley's addictions, and it took guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney a long time to decide to regroup, finally hiring William DuVall as Staley's replacement and delivering Black Gives Way to Blue a full 14 years after the band's last album. To everybody's credit, Black Gives Way to Blue sounds like it could have been delivered a year after Alice in Chains: it's unconcerned with fashion; it's true to their dark, churning gloom rock; and if you're not paying attention too closely, it's easy to mistake DuVall for his predecessor…
When Alice in Chains' debut album, Facelift, was released in 1990, about a year before Nirvana's Nevermind, the thriving Seattle scene barely registered on the national musical radar outside of underground circles (although Soundgarden's major-label debut, Louder Than Love, was also released that year and brought them a Grammy nomination). That started to change when MTV jumped all over the video for "Man in the Box," giving the group a crucial boost and helping to pave the way for grunge's popular explosion toward the end of 1991. Although their dominant influences - Black Sabbath, the Stooges - were hardly unique on the Seattle scene, Alice in Chains were arguably the most metallic of grunge bands, which gave them a definite appeal outside the underground; all the same, the group's sinister, brooding, suffocating sound resembled little else gaining wide exposure on the 1990 hard rock scene…
Due to its unfortunate timing - arriving in stores about two months after the passing of his former bandmate, Layne Staley - it may be impossible not to view Jerry Cantrell's second solo album, Degradation Trip, without hearing it through the prism of the demise of Alice in Chains and the death of Staley. First of all, the sound is instantly reminiscent of Cantrell's former band because, of course, he was instrumental in creating the slow, brooding minor-key grinds topped with flat vocal harmonies that were the group's stock in trade. Second, if you dig through the lyrics, it's easy to speculate that some of them are about the addiction that sunk Staley. These two qualities are so prominent that some may have a hard time getting around them, but serious listeners and longtime fans will find it much easier to get past the surface and appreciate the album as Cantrell's best record since Dirt…
The romantic comedy Singles, in part a homage to director Cameron Crowe's hometown of Seattle, was released at exactly the right time (summer 1992). Nirvana's Nevermind had symbolically knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the album charts at the beginning of the year, and the underground buzz about Seattle bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam was beginning to find its way past circles of indie aficionados and open-minded hard rock fans and into the mainstream. Singles helped crystallize the idea of the "Seattle scene" in the mainstream public's mind, and it was also one of the first big-selling '90s movie soundtracks (it went platinum and reached the Top Ten) to feature largely new work from contemporary artists. The soundtrack's strength was the way it was so firmly rooted in place – where future soundtrack extravaganzas simply contrived to gather as many big-name acts as possible, Singles focused specifically on Seattle-area music (quite logically, given the film's plot and setting), which gave the album the feel of a cohesive document.
Any discussion of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums will have to include some grunge, and this one is no different. A defining element of that decade, the genre (and the bands that rose to fame playing it) was given credit for revitalizing rock at a badly needed moment. That said, there's far more to the story. Our list of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums, presented in chronological order, takes in the rich diversity of the period.
Rising at the end of the 20th Century, SOUNDGARDEN were loud, heavy, genuine, and unaffected by whatever was cool. Their mix of weighty power, soaring melodies and punk sneer made them ideal standard bearers for the grunge movement, but their towering musicianship and intelligent songcraft helped them transcend the era and remain iconic far beyond their origins in the Seattle scene. Arguably their finest and most comprehensive statement, "Superunknown" was the album that launched them to global mega-stardom. It contains some of the most lasting, meaningful, and heaviest songs they ever wrote.