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Good review Zad!

Of course, this gives me a chance to get watery-eyed and reminisce about the good ol' days back to when I was merely 17 and the grunge scene exploded!! Yes, I was an unashamed grunge fan, between 80s thrash and 90s melodic death, and that scene often gets pissed upon because it was too 'emo' or too much of a 'sell-out' or whatever other reason people want to cuss about it.

IMO, it doesn't matter what the reputation of the artist is, as long as you're hooked by music that does something for you, then you can never be wrong... Dirt is a fine, fine album and should grace anyone's collection.

I liked how you mentioned that the commercial metal of the day needed to be put down for it's own good - I couldn't agree more. It made a new breed of Metal bands realise they needed to progress and innovate.

Sorry to list, but Dirt, Badmotorfinger, Superunknown, Dust, In Utero, Nevermind, Siamese Dream, Dirty, Piece of Cake, Ten and Vs all sit proudly in my CD collection next to Reign In Blood, Scum, Arise, Alien, Hatebreeder, Transilvanian Hunger, Slaughter of the Soul, Blackwater Park and The Wretched Spawn. It's all good shit to me!

Everybody knows AIC is one of my three favorite bands (of any genre), so I don't think I need to go into the details of why I think this album's a masterpiece. So I'll evaluate your review a little, Zad.

Personally, I think your grunge analysis at the beginning probably should've been shortened a little. It wasn't until about the third paragraph that you started your actual review of Dirt. Your analysis was interesting (and correct), but it really should've been reserved for a seperate article IMO. I also wish you went into a little more detail about the actual songs and why they're great (you left out my personal favorite: Angry Chair).

On the other hand, I like how you dispelled those popular notions that this is a concept album about drugs, let alone notions that it glorifies them (this is about as anti-drug as rock albums get). Staley's literal whining in songs like Sickman and Dirt should indicate how miserable he really was with his life when recording this album.

Overall, a good review for a spectacular album.

I fuckin' love alice in chains.

They were as metal as anything Pantera ever did and they were honest.

Actually, there were three bands floating around seattle around te late eighties. Mother Love bone (Pearl Jam with a different singer) Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.

Seek out those old alice in chains demos for some of the best music of the late 80's/ "Chained to the studio" is the name that collection goes by. Really worth checking out.

I like this album a lot though. It has a lot of great stuff, but like everything jerry cantrell and alice in chains was involved in, it is not completely outstanding. The band always had a knack for getting it 75% masterpiece level. But hell, EVERYONE has a fair amount of filler and songs that don't stack up.

I would have to say, Facelift is their best album hands down. One of my favorites. They sounded still somewhat like a failed hairband with the dark overtones. That album was their "cowboys from hell." The album that may not have defined them, but definitely produced their finest material. Also Facelift was their most rounded out album. 10 out of the 12 tracks really were incredible stuff.

I would disagree with zad about the depressing atomsphere on one point. That it was more of a rick james syndrome in that the band (yeah, the band, not just layne) absolutely reveled in the hellish world they created for themselves. Take it from me, no matter how bad t may seem, it really is the best of times despite the fact that 90% of the time it sucks. I think thats what they were hinting at. That the 10% of times living in the ecstacy of the moment is woth the bullshit that comes along with it.

Awesome band, awesome album, but I just can't call them heavy metal. It just doesn't fit.

I do tend to waffle a bit, but I prefer to talk about music in general terms rather than saying things like 'and then there's an awesome riff which will make you bang your head, and then he sings something, and then another riff'. Archive reviews, in my view, should include a fair bit of background info as well, esp. in a case like this where it's pretty much a classic in all but name.

Adveser, I haven't got your experience in los drugas, but from my own with alcohol you're partially right. I do revel in it at times, but not at others... depends, I suppose.

Ken, I was struggling a bit with the tag, but didn't want to just call them 'grunge'. AIC always sounded quite a lot like Black Label Society, and I consider them HM, so that was my thinking there.

It's usually when we're going through rough/bad times that we really develop and become better people. And typically, after we've properly handled these tough times, our lives are even better than they were before we started going through them. What makes AIC's music depressing, though, is that there was basically no light at the end of Layne's tunnel. His drug addiction kept getting worse and worse until, finally, he died. I've never done any drugs before, but after listening to AIC long enough, I think I can at least better understand drug addiction than I used to.

Incredible album. Easily the best grunge band. Pearl Jam is great too.Though I'm sick of everyone going on about Nirvana, probably the only grunge band I can remember which I really hate. Layne Staley>>>>>>Kurt Cobain.

Hm, I agree with that. Just because some bands on this scene were influenced by Black Sabbath doesn't make it metal. Although having said that AIC are much closer to it than a lot of the "grunge" bands... you are quite right that it is a scene rather than a style, Zad. But the grunge fans I know would be horrified to hear you call it metal, probably more so than the metalheads would be.

Personally, I don't like this:



IMO this is all manufactured. The people that turned metal as a whole into a "bloated excessive beast" were exactly the same as the people that turned it into grunge. That is, the music press, advertisers, record label execs. All that happened is that they decided one product was getting past its sell by date and they needed to find something new. And the perfect tagline for the new stuff? Why not present it as something revolutionary, played by ordinary people, and about real angst. Perfect.

That's not to say that there wasn't a lot of important music being made in that scene, or that it wasn't a reaction against hair metal. Simply that it is too simplistic an analysis to simply have this manufactured narrative of "hair metal=bad, grunge=the hero, saving the soul of mainstream music". It reminds me of the way people talk about punk and prog in 1976. Prior to the Sex Pistols the whole music world was suffering uinder the terrible tyrany of Rick Wakeman and his wizard costume, until JOhnny Rotten etc. killed all the prog bands and saved the day.

IMO this is a one dimensional way at looking at the development of music, and one that people are in danger of applying to the hair-metal/grunge transition also.

(and the stuff about the DM/BM explosion just doesn't ring true to me, but that's another discussion)

Yes, it is a cautionary tale about why not to take drugs, but then I wouldn't call it an anti-drugs album without qualification. Often the lyrics are very cynical about mainstream (ie non-drug) culture, and sometimes seem to be satirising clean people that look down on drug users in a smug way rather than the dtrug users themselves.

That is right rio, that was the attitude they wanted for the album in my opinion.

Another point about layne staley is that they guy actually got clean in the mid-90's. He and his girl stopped doing hard drugs. Unfortunatley his girlfriend died from a vein disorder.

After that layne started doing drugs again. I really don't blame him at all. The guy lost his reason for living.

Good choice Zad, one of my all time favorite bands. I was very saddened by Layne's death. He was an amazing vocalist, and his struggles were well documented. His death signaled the end of this band for me. I know they've hinted at a return with Jerry on vocals. It might be good or even great, but it won't be AIC.

This is the album that got me into metal back in the day, especially the riffing on Them Bones. One of the great things about AIC is that I literally hold all their studio albums in the same high regard and can't pick a favorite. I just wish I could've seen them live.

I remember for some reason Them bones was the only song I just couldn't get th hang of on Gutar Hero... it was just impossible for me, once you put it on the higher difficulty levels.

If you're referring to the song Junkhead, I kind of disagree. I always got the impression that particular song was piercing directly into the mind of a heroin addict, showcasing how an addict typically thinks. I don't think it was promoting drug use, but showing the mindset of a drug user in serious denial about his condition (hence how miserably hypnotic both the song and Layne's singing are).

One more thing I'd like to add with regards to my opinion of this review is that I liked how Zad pointed out how hypocritical it is that, for many, it's okay for "real metal" to have "I Hate My Parents/Self/Society/etc." lyrics, but it isn't okay for nu-metal or mainstream rock to have such lyrics. As if metal musicians somehow have more of a reason to hate the world than everybody else.

Well, most of the time the persons playing in this genre have no reason to write such lyrics, because they're filthy fucking rich. Thus they come across (at least to me) as phony.

Yeah, but money doesn't necessarily buy happiness.

Seriously, though. These mainstream rock and nu-metal bands may be "filthy fucking rich", but does that necessarily mean they're happy with their lives? They may still have a lot of past hurts and traumas that they never got over. Or they may be socially shy/awkward. Or, in the case of a lot of nu-metal bands ( ), perhaps because they never had to work for all their money, they feel their lives are empty and meaningless. No offense, but assuming that, because somebody has a lot of money, he/she is automatically happy is a very shallow way of thinking about other people.

Layne Staley himself was probably at least a several-hundred-thousandaire. But he was about as unhappy with his life as you can possibly be.

Yes, true. However, I still doubt that Fred Durst and Chester Bennington and the like are suffering from any sort of misery or past trauma...

itt: rich people don't have feelings