Recommended tracks: ‘Them Bones’, ‘Would?’, ‘Rain When I Die’ Whatever you choose to call ‘Dirt’, it is a masterpiece of dark, powerful music that belongs in any rock collection. For what it’s worth, I have always considered them a metal band for the alternative rock era. There are too many huge, monolithic metal riffs on ‘Dirt’ to limit them to the meaningless grunge tag. Much like Soundgarden, however, Alice In Chains sort of bridged a gap between scenes. It is an atypical closer in how it suddenly ends, but such a wonderfully dynamic track that it hardly matters.Īs someone who liked the state of heavy metal in the eighties, it would be tempting to dismiss anything that came from Seattle in the nineties. ‘Would?’ eventually became the number one fan favorite of the band. The title track is a twisted psychedelic rocker dominated by Jerry Cantrell’s wah-drenched riffs, ‘Down In A Hole’ a full-on elegiac ballad, ‘Rooster’ a remarkably refreshing subversion of the power ballad and the catchy ‘Godsmack’ still has a few traces of funk metal riffs, which are all the more powerful due to their relatively limited number. What is most impressive about the rest of the album is that all of it is instantly recognizable as Alice In Chains, but there is still a great degree of variation. ‘Dam That River’ is still a driven rocker, but ‘Rain When I Die’ already kicks down the tempo a few notches, which allows the Staley-Cantrell vocal duo to shine even more. This philosophy extends to the next two songs, but in a way that it eases you into the less easily digestible material on the album, especially by how it subtly slows down.
The lyrics are firmly tongue-in-cheek, while the tempo is above average for the band. Opening track ‘Them Bones’ was the first Alice In Chains song I have ever heard and excellent proof of how the band keeps their music listenable. Alice In Chains are masters of this balance. What remains is certainly dark and depressive, but with enough memorable melodies and excellent songwriting to not become totally unlistenable. The debut occasionally touched upon that, but there were also distinct traces of the band’s glam metal past. In a sense, ‘Dirt’ is the album where Alice In Chains found its signature sound: generally slow, creepy riffs that combine a seventies hard rock swagger with a doom metal feel and of course the trademark dual vocal harmonies by Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell. While Alice In Chains has yet to release an album not worth hearing, there is a sense of urgency and a dark, twisted atmosphere to ‘Dirt’ that none of their other albums consistently feature, making it one of my favorite albums of all time. It will be an impossible task to find the words for how much I love this album, but if one album deserves the effort, it would be Alice In Chains’ sophomore album. And yet, that is what I will be doing in the next five hundred words or so. You probably don’t need me to tell you that ‘Dirt’ is a masterpiece.
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