“It’s a shame, really. So much unfulfilled potential.” – Me
“Not really, I mean, four great albums…” – Al
“Yeah…” – Me
“…Four TV series, a feature film…” – Al
“Wait…TV series? Film? Huh?” – Me
“Yeah…wait, who are you talking about?” – Al
“
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about S Club 7.” – Al
“No, Alice In Chains.” – Me
“Oh, OK, my bad then. I don’t know anything about Alice In Chains other than they suck.” – Al
Albums Reviewed:
Alice In
Chains’ being marketed as a grunge band back in “the day” never fails to crack
me up. I mean, they just happened to be
from
Personally,
I’d rate these boys third out of the big
I’ve already gone through half the lineup, and all of the important members of the lineup, so I’ll make this paragraph quick. From left to right are bassist Mike Inez, Staley, Cantrell, and drummer Sean Kinney. Inez was actually the band’s second bassist. Mike Starr played on Facelift, Sap (not reviewed here, too fucking short), and the fabulously dark Dirt. Then Inez played on the fabulously purty Jar Of Flies (reviewed here, not too fucking short) and the unfocused self-titled album. There you go. That’s the band. Nothing much else to say.
And onto the reviews!
Matt
Ward (high_bogan_sinner@hotmail.com) writes:
I think your review of Alice In Chains was laughable, but
it's ok because
you obviously want to make an arse of yourself anyway. Oh, they dont multi
track their vocals either moron, there's 2 singers! haha why don't you
review S Club 7, you'll probably find it more to your liking, a few guys and
girls dancing round singing about trivial things. What about Nelly? he sings
about buying a pair of shoes, maybe that's something you could comprehend,
unlike a song about drug addiction.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, CUNT.
Pedro Andino (pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
shut the fuck up, dickshit!
let the man do his job!
rwgonline@hotmail.com writes:
(Brad responds:
Al, dude, I think this is directed at you.
You gonna take that?)
Al Lazaris
writes:
Wow, he did diss me. And you know what? He sucks as bad as AIC, but at least I don’t
have to hear him on the radio.
(Brad responds:
Awwww, snap!)
Facelift (1990)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Man In The Box”
Like pretty much all of Alice In Chains’ albums except Jar Of Flies (which, therefore, means all of Alice In Chains’ albums, PERIOD, technically), how much you like this depends heavily on two things: First, do you mind slow, plodding, metal? If you need that processed pop sheen (oh, so smooth...), Alice In Chains is most likely not your band. Second, what kind of MOOD are you in? Because even if you LIKE this type of music, if you’re in a happy, upbeat, party, fast-living, good-time mood, Alice In Chains is DEFINITELY not your band. These prerequisites are not so much true for Dirt (because it’s so damn GOOD it can overcome them) and the self-titled album (because it’s so damn WEIRD and MESSY it can overcome them), but, for this album here, they hold VERY true.
Wait…well, shit. Now the first sentence of this review is complete and total crap. I fucking HATE IT when I contradict myself. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Whatever. It’s not the first time.
OK, the
mood thing IS true for this album right here.
Because it’s depressing. VERY,
VERY depressing. And not a cool kind of
uplifting depressing (if that even exists…) like Dirt. Just depressing. Look at the first few song titles. “We Die Young.” “
Alright, I still haven’t written a goddamn review. Let’s get to it. This album is metal. Not “grunge.” Metal. And it’s more “metal” than AIC’s two other full-length releases for two reasons. First, it came out in 1990, so Nirvana hadn’t broke yet, and “grunge” didn’t exist. Second, the boys hadn’t fully developed their sound yet, so it’s more “stereotypical metal” than “stereotypical Alice In Chains.” See, when I think of AIC, I think of the sludgy guitar riffs augmented by some of the coolest and creepiest vocal harmonies ever heard by mortal man. For this record, they have the slow, sludgy, Sabbath-y riffs, but they don’t yet have the harmonies, and that’s why I can’t give the record a rating any higher than 7. I mean, the songs aren’t THAT much worse than the Dirt material, but the whole package is just weaker and more “generic metal” than their other stuff. Layne Staley’s voice is still cool and creepy, but the only real harmony you get is the “woooooon’t yoooouuuuuuuu coooooooooome aaaaaaaaaaand save me” part of “Man In The Box,” which is PHENOMENAL, by the way. It’s one of those songs that doesn’t seem like much if you listen to it in passing on the radio or something, but, when you put on your trusty headphones of luuuuuuuuuv, you just realize the full fucking majesty of the song, because that one-note riff that keeps sludge-sludge-sludging along is so much more interesting than you thought. There’s all sorts of wah-wah and harmonics stuff going on (Note: I really have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, since I don’t play guitar) that it just becomes the MOST MESMERIZING one-note riff I’ve ever heard. Good shit.
The quality of the rest of the material here is solid as well (if not as awesome as “Mime In An Imaginary Hand-Box”), even if the record is a bit “stereotypical metal” and depressing as hell. I suppose there are a few missteps in the second half, like the pseudo-boogie rock of “Put You Down” and “I Know Somethin’ (‘Bout You).” I don’t know why Alice In Chains are trying to boogie. They’re Alice In Fucking Chains. They don’t boogie. They sludge. And they also write pretty good, melodic stuff to put over the sludge, though, as I said, the harmonies aren’t much on this album. “We Die Young” is a good opener. I quite like “Bleed The Freak,” but possibly only because it has the most disturbing song title I’ve ever heard. The intro to “I Can’t Remember” is really good stuff, with the periodic low guitar blasts of DOOM over the other relatively light guitar tone. “Love, Hate, Love” is the slowest song I’ve heard in my entire life, but it RULES ASS with its bombasticity (LOVE, HATE, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!) and whatnot. Most of the second half really doesn’t stand out in my mind at ALL, though, except for the fact that some of it boogies (WHY?) and Layne Staley yells “SEXUAL CHOCOLATE, BABY!” at the end of the closer “Real Thing.” I’m sure it all sludges, though. Not like the first half, though! That shit sludges GOOD!
This is such a stereotypical debut album it’s not even funny. You can see where the band’s going, but you can also see they’re just not there yet, and it’s the only one where (except for the vocals, even though these aren’t fully developed yet either) they just sound like “some metal band” a bunch of the time. Alice In Chains is introspective, depressing, well-written sludge combined with beautiful and disturbing vocal harmonies. They are not boogie, which is why “I Know Somethin’ (‘Bout You)” ain’t great shakes. But also because that song title is bullshit. Too many goddamn apostrophes. Fucking apostrophes. You know what, apostrophes? I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER!! IN THE ASS!!!!! How about THAT, bitch?
Dirt (1992)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Down In A Hole”
First of all, yes, I know there’s an acoustic EP (Sap) in between Facelift and this album here. It’s like fifteen minutes long, and don’t review EP’s on this site. It’s a policy of mine. And I made it because I like having policies. They make me feel big.
Now we can get to this record here, which presents the only official full-length LP coming from a fully-formed and differentiated (no more “random metal band”-ness like on Facelift) and focused (unlike the self-titled album) Alice In Chains at the top of their game. Just like Facelift, its VERY depressing lyrically, but, like, it’s a DIFFERENT KIND of depressing. It’s “fuck, I’m on drugs, I’ll probably die soon” depressing instead of “fuck, my life sucks” depressing, and I like it when bands get specific about exactly why they’re depressed. And, just as the lyrics have gotten better, the band is MILES ahead of Facelift. Like I said, I’m not sure how much better the actual songs are, but they put so much more into the songs. Different guitar textures (actually SOFTENING UP A BIT now and then, which is nice) and the Alice-special ETHEREAL vocal harmonies all make their presence felt here, and, I have to say, I much appreciate it. Possibly the best example of ALL of this new stuff is the superb “Down In A Hole,” which might be the best song the band ever did (either that or “Over Now,” not sure). The soft, beautiful intro, the likes of which is just not found on Facelift, and when the heavy guitars kick in, I don’t know if I’ve EVER heard better vocal harmonies than that “Down in a hoooooooooole” chorus. Man, that shit gives me the chills! The fucking CHILLS, man! I like the chills. The only thing better than the chills? A blowjob. I’ve yet to find a song that can give me that, though. That’d be quite a find, you think?
Anyway, this album is just so much more interesting (I think that’s becoming a buzz-word of mine) than Facelift. It’s not “just a bunch of pretty good sludgy metal songs.” The “AH!!” and absolutely BRUTAL ascending riff of the opener “Them Bones” welcomes you IMMEDIATELY to the show in superb fashion. “Dam That River” is just as brutal. “Rain When I Die” lets up for a bit, with some softness, and then some wah-wah, at least until the “I think it’s gonna RAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIN, when I die!” chorus comes in. “Sickman” is one of those rare songs that manages to effectively sound like a drug addict feels, with the base fast/manic part undercut by that beautiful, harmony-drenched part and all sorts of weird voices in the background. “Rooster” is a fucking BALLAD (sorta, it’s Alice In Chains, come on), stuck in the middle, about Jerry Cantrell’s father’s Vietnam War experiences. And there are FEMALE BACKUP SINGERS! Cool. “Junkhead” has the single most disturbing line I’ve ever heard in my life (you know, “What’s my drug of choice? Well, what have you got?”), made even more disturbing by the beauty of the multiple Layne Staley harmony goodness. The riff to the title track sounds middle-eastern or something, and again the lyrics are great in a depressing, disturbing sort of way (“You, you are so special. You have the talent to make me feel like dirt.”).
Right about here, the album begins to drag a bit, though thankfully it only drags for ten minutes. I’m not much of a fan of either “God Smack” or “Hate To Feel,” though the little interlude “Intro (Dream Sequence)” in between them cracks me up. “I…AM…IRON…GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” Cool. It’s nice to have, you know, ten seconds of humor amidst AN HOUR of sheer bleakness and brutality. I also find it funny that that SHITTY band Godsmack took its name from the song on this album. I mean…IT’S THE WORST SONG ON THE FUCKING ALBUM!!!! IT’S A BAD FUCKING SONG! Layne sings the lyrics like he has a crack pipe down his throat or something, and the “What in god’s name have you done!” chorus marks the only appearance of “boogie” on the album, and that’s not good. Ofcourse, Godsmack the band SUCKS ASS. Have you heard that song that was on the Scorpion King soundtrack? “I!!! STAND ALONE!!!” Fucking horseshit. Moral of the story: Any band that names themselves after the worst song on a seminal nineties grunge album will probably suck balls.
After these two relative suck-jobs, the album finishes off nicely, with “Angry Chair” and “Would?” Actually, part of “Angry Chair” kind of sucks, too, so the album hasn’t quite finished dragging yet, but the harmonies in the “I don’t mind” part ARE brilliant. The closer, “Would?”, however, fucking RULES PENIS. Possibly the second best song on the record, though “Rooster” might have something to say about that. You know, to me, it actually seems like an ideal album OPENER, funnily enough, though “Them Bones” has that covered pretty well. I also think this album has quite possibly the coolest (non Pink Floyd category) album “cycle” I’ve ever heard, if you follow me. Since I have the thing on an mp3 playlist, the record immediately goes back to the beginning when the last song finishes. The transition from “Would?” back to “Them Bones” sounds so natural, like they were meant to be listened to back-to-back. “IF! I! WOULD! COULD! YOOOOUUUU!…AH!…AH!…AH!” I’m telling you, it works. I don’t know if it means anything, but I just find it pretty damn cool.
To tell you the truth, I almost gave an 8 to this record, but there’s so much good stuff I just COULDN’T DO IT. I must not have been in the right mood that time I listened to it and went “eh, it’s an 8.” I mean, it’s a full hour of near-complete brutality, and more so emotionally and lyrically than musically. If you’re just letting it “float past” in the background, it’s not gonna seem all that special. You need to really pay attention and immerse yourself in the bleak and hopeless atmosphere of the album. Only, don’t do it right before finals period like I did. That still probably wasn’t the best idea.
Jar Of Flies (1994)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Rotten Apple”
First of all, yes, I know that I have staunchly maintained a no-EP policy for this site, and now, here I am, reviewing what is technically an EP. What gives? Well, first, its THIRTY-ONE minutes long. EP my ass. That’s a Van Halen album! Right there! 31 minutes! Second, it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts when it came out, so, again, that ain’t no ordinary “EP.” Third, The All Music Guide lists it as an LP, and, although that personally doesn’t really mean shit to me, it’s still another piece of evidence. Finally, fourth, it’s the best thing Alice In Chains ever put out, so I can’t not review it, right?
And yeah, I DO mean it when I say this is the best thing they ever put out. It’s clearly better than Dirt. Like, for Dirt, I thought about giving it an 8 for a little before settling on a 9. For this one, I actually thought about giving it a 10 for a bit before settling on a 9. I couldn’t in good conscience give this a 10. I mean, there’s only 6 real songs, and only one cracks five minutes (the brilliant seven minute “Rotten Apple”), but the fact that I even CONSIDERED it should show you right there what I think of this thing. This album (yes, album) is fucking AWESOME, and everyone should have it in their collection, even if they think metal is shit.
And that’s because, like the Sap EP before it (which I’m not reviewing, since it IS a real EP), this is all acoustic ballads. Instead of sheer emotional brutality, on this baby you get half an hour of harrowing beauty. I mean, it’s not ALL acoustic. There’s electric flourishes in most of the songs, and the closing “Swing On This” is actually mostly electric, but the overall feel you get from this thing is beauty, with the swirling acoustics, GORGEOUS vocal harmonies (Layne Staley’s best vocal work is found here), string arrangements, etc. Like the band looked inside the cold, brutal, unfeeling world of Dirt and found a little beauty, plucked it out, and made a half-hour EP.
The most amazing thing about this record is that they wrote and recorded the ENTIRE THING in a week. You hear me? ONE FUCKING WEEK!!! Never mind writing a half-hour of material this brilliant in a week, but recording the whole thing too, which I find incredibly hard to believe, because the music here is very layered. Possibly not as much as Dirt, but clearly more so than Facelift. I mean, the vocal harmonies alone sound like they could take a week to do. Crappy bands could write for months and not come with anything as good as the TWO MINUTE INSTRUMENTAL track, “Whale And Wasp,” with sorrowfully muted electric notes undercut by pretty acoustic work and occasionally answered (in a really beautiful way) by the string section, and then how it’s followed by the first half of “Don’t Follow,” just acoustic and harmonica, and absolutely GORGEOUS. The second half picks up a bit, after the drums come in and jumpify it a little, just so the relative brutality (the only appearance of it, really) of “Swing On This” doesn’t seem like such a shocking transition, but it still rules, with a great harmonica solo in there.
Every song on here is not just good, it’s very good. There’s no “Down In A Hole” orgasmic high or anything, but they’re all great, and, except for “Swing On This,” they all sound really similar. Just mellow acoustic ballads, with touches of quiet electric solos and/or string sections, and Layne’s perfect vocal harmonies on top. And let me also add that I think this is Sean Kinney’s best drumming performance as well, even though he only plays on like four and a half songs or something. I’m not usually a big fan of his drumming. He sounds too much like Creed’s drummer (probably NOT a coincidence, AHEM), though still better than that buffoon, obviously. Good stuff here, though. My favorite tune on the album is “Rotten Apple,” with those beautiful “Hey ah na na”’s, but I have a hunch I only like it because it’s two minutes longer than anything else. Just get this thing today, even if you don’t like Alice In Chains or metal or whatever. You’ll love it, trust me. Even you, Al.
Oh, and let me say that I realize this review wasn’t very funny at all, and I apologize. You’ve come to expect certain things from me, and, goshdarnit, I just didn’t get it done. Well, you win some, you lose some. Just gotta take it one review at a time, keep on playing hard, pick up the defensive intensity, and hope for a few lucky bounces. It’s a long season.
Alice
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Over Now”
You know, Alice In Chains is really an interesting band, if only for the stereotypicality (Did I just make up a word? Most likely…) of their albums. Facelift was really a stereotypical debut. Dirt was a stereotypical album from a band “at the top of their game,” so to speak. And this record here is a stereotypical album from a band that has become an unfocused shell of its former self. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s a ludicrously overlong album with a handful of SUPERB songs as well as a whoooole lot of messy, unfocused, mediocre, melody-less crap. So, in between songs like “Heaven Beside You” and “Again” and whatever where the band still has their mojo working, you have to sift through useless sludge like “Brush Away” and “Head Creeps” and “Nothin’ Song” and like forty more minutes of “material” that the band would have rejected without even thinking TWICE about it three years before. You know what else is funny? If you don’t count Jar Of Flies, they went through all the stages of a typical band’s shelf life in three fucking albums. Why were they in such a goddamn hurry? You’d think they’d slow down, since their music’s so goddamn slow. Plus they were all goddamn drug addicts. Or maybe just Layne Staley. He did enough heroin for all four of ‘em, so it works either way.
OK, so you might be asking, “what are these awesome songs you speak of, so I can just go and download them, making the rest of this review completely useless?” Well, I’ll tell you, but only if you take that out of your mouth.
Come on, I can wait JUST as long as you can suck. Finish it up, Dave Haddow.
OK, good. Well, for starters, the first song on the album, “Grind,” rules. It sounds like it might be the SLUDGIEST SONG OF ALL TIME for a while, and then the beautiful harmonized smack-injecting Layne Staleys come in with that “let the sun never blind your eyes” part, and it’s very good stuff. “Again” is nearly as sludgy, but the manic “again and again and again…” chorus and ending “doo DOO!” parts rule ass. “Heaven Beside You” is part pretty ballad, and part two other parts that make NO FUCKING SENSE being in the same song together, but the pretty ballad chorus is so brilliant it doesn’t matter. “Shame In You” is a ballad that makes sense all the way, is absolutely GORGEOUS, and is probably my second favorite tune here, behind the AWESOME closer “Over Now,” which contains quite possibly the most sorrowful intro ever recorded (that trumpet slowly playing a funeral march) and MIGHT be my favorite Alice In Chains tune ever, but, as I mentioned two reviews ago, I’m not sure. “Down In A Hole” is pretty fucking cool, too. If the rest of the album were as good as these five selections, I’d probably rate it about equal with Jar Of Flies, if not even a little higher.
It’s not, though. It sucks. I mean, it fucking sucks. SUCKS BIG, HARD BALLS OF SUCK. I think the band wanted to create the sludgiest album of all time, and between “Grind,” “Again,” and EVERY OTHER SONG ON THE ALBUM, it looks like they might have succeeded. I mean, one of the songs here is called fucking “SLUDGE FACTORY,” for god sakes. And it’s not very good. It’s seven minutes long and does nothing. And what’s with that weird “YOUR WEAPON IS KILL!” spoken word part? Crap. “Frogs” manages to one-up “Sludge Factory,” however, or, more accurately “two-up,” because, somehow, it does even LESS, and does it for EIGHT AND A HALF MINUTES. I’ve listened to this album like seven times. I still can’t tell you a damn thing about “Frogs.” It might as well not exist. Aristophanes is rolling in his grave.
The rest is just as bad, by the way. The problem is it’s REALLY sludgy, but without any discernable sense of melody, so it just kind of sludges along, mucking up your head, but without giving you the big pay-off. “Brush Away” and “God Am” are perfect examples of this, as is “Nothin’ Song,” which also, like “Sludge Factory” and “Frogs” (I’m assuming…I mean, I can’t remember a damn thing about this fucking song, but it IS over eight minutes) provides an example of the “needless and utterly unfocused multi-part suite where all of the parts suck ass.” Of the remaining two songs, “Head Creeps” is six and a half minutes of exactly ONE crappy musical idea, and “So Close” is like trying to be punk or something, so it blows massive chunks of your mother’s liposuction treatments (the fat whore) as well.
This is one FRUSTRATING album. “Grind,” “Heaven Beside You,” “Again,” “Shame In You,” and “Over Now” truly are SUPERB songs, and any band would be ecstatic to have written even one or two of them. But the rest is SO GODDAMN USELESS. It angers me. A band capable of writing “Over Now” should be able to look at a song like, say, “So Close,” go “Hey, you know what? This song blows!” and then dump it. Why didn’t they do this? I dunno. Probably because Layne Staley was such a fucking smackhead. That was probably an issue there, I’m gonna guess.
And to all you Layne Staley fans, I’m sorry I’m making fun of a dead man. It’s wrong, and I regret it.
Ofcourse, he wouldn’t be dead if he weren’t such a fucking smackhead.
MTV Unplugged (1996)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Nutshell”
There's a reason that most
Unplugged concerts don't sell bazillions of copies and become huge hits like
the ones by Nirvana and Eric Crapton (Japanese pronunciation), and that is most
Unplugged concerts sound like this one. Slow, stodgy, and often
uninspired. I mean, you can't call this one any kind of MTV shill sellout
performance or anything, since the band was always down with the acoustics, and
this is actually their first performance ANYWHERE in three years due to Layne
Staley's "habits" (look at the pictures of him in the liner notes
here...he looks fucking terrible), a fact they allude to a few times,
saying things like "you know, I think I can safely say this is our best
performance and three years" and whatnot. But it's still not all
that impressive.
Why is it
unimpressive, you ask? Well, it's predictable and it's boring. So there you go. The song selection is
all tunes from their EP's (which were acoustic ANYWAY and don't change at all
in this setting) and some of the slower, more ballad-y songs from Dirt
and Three-Legged Dog, as well as a pretty neat new tune called
"Killer is Me." Here's how we break it down: the EP songs,
including the as-yet-unreviewed-on-this-page "Brother" and "Got
Me Wrong" from Sap, are carbon copies of the studio versions and,
thus, just as pretty, slow, cool, and creepy as them (especially the opening
"Nutshell," which gets my vote for best performance
here). The self-titled album songs more or less depend on their quality
on the album, so "Heaven Beside You" and "Over Now" are
great (though a bit weaker on acoustics) and "Sludge Factory" and
"Frogs" continue to suck (and suck even more on acoustics). The band even cuts both of those last two
short by like two or three minutes each, realizing one man can only take so
much suck. Finally, the Dirt tunes more or less lose their entire
reason to exist when taken out of their original context, and the lack of power
that songs such as "Down in a Hole" and "Would?" have in this
setting is astonishing to me. Then, double finally, as mentioned before,
"Killer is Me," with that neat out-of-tune chord sequence, rules my
ass. Oh, and they also break into the intro to "Enter Sandman"
for no reason before they put me to sleep by playing their fucking acoustic
version of fucking "Sludge Factory."
So, in the end,
you have this: the songs that were on the acoustic EP's are equal to their
originals, and every single song that had electric guitars/was on a
full-length album originally is made weaker, even if this is sometimes only
slightly so, such as with everything from the self-titled record. When
I'm done listening to this album, I leave annoyed and uninspired by the
performances given by the band, but I still cannot give the record any less
than a 7. On a purely mathematical
scale, I must give a true thumbs-up to at least 7 of the 13 performances here,
and a lot of the rest is just "boring" and not "actively
bad," excepting "Sludge Factory" and "Frogs" (known by
me as the anti-dynamic duo). Make no mistake, this is FOR FANS ONLY, and
if you're not a huge fanatic of this band, I would recommend you stay away from
this release at all costs. Everything
good on it (and I’ll admit there’s a good bit) can be found in equal or better
versions on other releases, except "Killer is Me," which, though damn
good, isn't super-awesome enough to by itself warrant purchase of this
thing. Overall, this concert is just
kind of "eh," and, except for the EP tunes, contains none of the
power or atmosphere I'd come to expect from this band in its best
moments. And finally, just as with every
Mother said come home. Father said come home. Sisters said come home. So my friends said come home.