ALICE IN CHAINS: Dirt

Produced by Dave Jensen and Alice in Chains

Released: 1992

Alice in Chains arose from Seattle at the same time as grunge and are still often considered as part of that scene. While their music encompassed aspects of grunge, Alice in Chains had formed as a speed metal band in the mid-80s before developing a brooding, moody and at times depressing style that remains unique to this day despite the myriad of copyists to have emerged since.

This is no better exemplified than on 1992's Dirt, a seminal masterpiece of dark, sludgy metal that spawned five hit singles and left an indelible mark on artists throughout the rock spectrum from Godsmack to Metallica and beyond. By rights it should be impossible to actually enjoy an album as gloomy as this, yet the catchy riffs, sublime vocal melodies and superb songwriting engage the listener again and again, taking them on a depressing and occasionally sordid journey through soul-crushing drug dependancy and bleak emotional turmoil. Most of the Seattle bands from this period were offering up similar volumes that wallowed in self-loathing and self-pity, but only a handful are still remembered and probably none still ring with such potency as this.

Much of Dirt centres around singer Layne Staley's drug hell: "Godsmack", "Junkhead", "Hate to Feel", "Sickman" - all so candid and pained in their exploration of hopeless heroin addiction it's a wonder anyone could try it after hearing them, especially "Junkhead" in which he seems to realise how trapped he is, but no longer cares. Just listening to the anguish and despair in Staley's voice as he wails through lyrics like "Cast all them aside who care/Empty eyes and dead-end stare" is disturbing enough but Alice in Chains went further, combining it with a musical backdrop of brooding, heavily bass-driven Black Sabbath-like sludge for a starkly haunting result. Even the songs that aren't about drugs are thoroughly unsettling: "Rain When I Die" and "Down in a Hole" are pure desolation.

The album's centerpiece is "Rooster", Jerry Cantrell's dedication to his Vietnam-vet father, a song completely different in subject matter to all the others but with exactly the same theme. With the band providing the perfect combination of moods, Staley's voice precisely embodies the despair, angst and rage of a man trapped in a situation of utter hopelessness; his soaring choruses are deftly and subtlely underpinned by Cantrell's backing vocals that would only be noticable if they weren't there.

Alice in Chains never made a bad album but Dirt is where all the elements came together, transcending almost everything else that Seattle threw up in its self-deprecating misery. It was Layne Staley's great triumph, and the foretelling his own doom.

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. Iron Gland


11. Hate to Feel


12. Angry Chair


13. Would?

Rating: 97%