Music / Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains in the Du Vall era since 2005.^note L-R: Mike Inez, Jerry Cantrell, William Du Vall and Sean Kinney.

The band in the Staley era from 1987 to 1996.^note L-R: Kinney, Cantrell, Layne Staley and Inez.

Influences:

• Metallica, Slayer, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Blue Öyster Cult, King's X, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, Alice Cooper, Elton John, Heart, Queensrÿche, Budgie, Motörhead, Sex Pistols, The Pixies, Iron Maiden, MercyfulFate, The Misfits, Melvins

Related Acts:

• Mad Season
• Alice N' Chainz
• Spies 4 Darwin
• Black Label Society

"Into the flood again
Same old trip it was back then
So I made a big mistake
Try to see it once my way"

— "Would?"

Alice in Chains is a grunge/metal band from Seattle, Washington, known for their legacy as one of the biggest acts of the early '90s.

Founded in 1987 by frontman Layne Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell, they are most known for their dark, gloomy sound and vocal harmonies between Staley and Cantrell. They were arguably the first band of the grunge scene to achieve commercial success with their debut album Facelift. During this time, their anthemic hit "Man in the Box" received significant play on MTV's Headbanger's Ball block, giving them an audience among metal fans. Their next release was an acoustic EP called Sap in 1992, probably best known for the song "Got Me Wrong," which was featured in Clerks.

Their follow-up full-length album, Dirt, was released later the same year, and became a success with the mainstream audience, due in part to Nirvana's release of Nevermind and the breakout of grunge. They released another acoustic EP in 1994, titled Jar of Flies, which quickly topped the Billboard 200 chart, making it the first-ever EP to reach the number one spot (it remained the only EP to gain this distinction until Linkin Park & Jay-Z released Collision Course in 2004). One year later, they released a self-titled studio album, which reached #1 again and is often considered the last album of the grunge era.

The self-titled album came around the same time that Staley's heroin addiction began to overwhelm him and caused tension within the band. By 1996, the group disbanded and Cantrell went ahead to release his first solo album, Boggy Depot. In 1999, the group reunited to produce a Greatest Hits Album/box set with several new songs. Despite teasing a full-on reunion, Staley's heroin addiction culminated in him dying from an overdose in early April 2002. Staley's corpse would not be discovered until two weeks later (April 20, 2002^note according to coroners, he actually died on April 5, ironically on the eight-year anniversary of the death of fellow grunge singer Kurt Cobain). After Staley's death, Alice in Chains officially disbanded.

Even after his death, Layne Staley remains a major inspiration for many artists today, with many singers such as Sully Erna of Godsmack (the band claims that their name is not a reference to the AIC song^note despite the fact they started off as an AiC cover band of the same name, but even if it's genuinely not, the connection is hard to avoid making), Aaron Lewis of Staind, and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park citing him as a major influence. In addition, Jerry Cantrell's second solo album, Degradation Trip and Metallica's Death Magnetic were both dedicated to him.

The band reformed in 2005 for a tsunami benefit concert and began touring with a number of guest vocalists, including Phil Anselmo, Maynard James Keenan, James Hetfield, Chester Bennington, Sebastian Bach, and Ann Wilson. They chose William DuVall as their official new vocalist in 2006 and released their first new album in 14 years, Black Gives Way to Blue, in September of 2009. The album peaked at #5 on the Billboard chart and has sold in excess of 500,000 copies.

On March 8, 2011, former bassist Mike Starr was found dead in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Their fifth album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, was released on May 28, 2013. By its second day, it reached #1 on the iTunes' rock album chart. Their sixth album, Rainier Fog, was released on August 24, 2018. It debuted at Number 12 on the Billboard 200 and Number 1 on the Hard Rock charts. Even over a decade and a half since the untimely demise of one of their most established members, the band continues their stride and stands strong.

See also Jerry Cantrell's solo work.

---

Lineup:

Current Members:

• William DuVall - vocals, rhythm guitar
• Jerry Cantrell - vocals, lead guitar
• Mike Inez - Bass
• Sean Kinney - Drums

Former Members:

• Layne Staley - vocals, rhythm guitar 1987-2002
• Mike Starr - bass, 1987-1993

Studio Discography:

• Facelift (1990)
• Sap (1992)
• Dirt (1992)
• Jar of Flies (1994)
• Alice in Chains (1995)
• Black Gives Way to Blue (2009)
• The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013)
• Rainier Fog (2018)

---

"Gonna end up a big ole page of them tropes":

• Alice Allusion: If their name is of any obvious indication. Not to mention that one of their tour posters feature Alice with the Cheshire Cat.
• Anti-Love Song: "Love Song", the cacophonic hidden track on Sap, is about someone who's emotionally done with their relationship. While they still feel something for the other person, they're in too much personal turmoil to make it worthwhile.
• Ate His Gun: "Dirt" mentions this. And scraping brains from the walls.
• Badass Boast: comparatively rare in their lyrics compared to some metal bands, but still there:
  • From "Last of my Kind": " A wolf alone upon the hillside / I live on what they throw away/ I go to sleep behind the 8 ball/ I live to fight for one more day"
  • And "Phantom Limb": "My regrets are many, true.../ Still so much worse lies ahead.... for you!"
• Berserk Button: Making fun of his addiction was a surefire way to make Layne Staley extremely angry. When The Rocket (a now-defunct Seattle-area music 'zine) wrote an article on the retirement of Alice in Chains' longtime manager that included the words "But who's to wipe and change Alice in Chains now?", Layne evidently took great umbrage at this and sent them a jar of urine and a bag of human feces with an attached note that read "Wipe and change this, motherfuckers!" The staffers, as grossed out as they were, were also relieved at the time, as Layne had long since disappeared from the public eye and was the subject of numerous rumors about his health and the depths of his addiction. When it arrived in the mail, they instantly knew it was from him, because it was exactly the sort of thing Layne would do.
• Big Rock Ending: A particularly disturbing variety in "Head Creeps". Kinney's drum fills become chaotic, slowing down behind the guitar's dissonant squeals. "Hate to Feel" has a similar ending.
• Bowdlerise: In the radio and video edit versions of "Man in the Box," the word "shit" is censored and rewritten in the lyrics, so that they say "Buried in my pit" in the first verse, and "Shove my nose in spit" in the second verse. Ironic, as the song is about censorship.
  • At least the above example tries to make some sense. There's another hilariously bad radio edit where the aforementioned curse words are just edited in reverse instead of actual words. Staley's upward inflections in the words are also reversed and it sounds very off.
• Break-Up Song: "Down in a Hole" was Cantrell's way of admitting to his long-time girlfriend that the life he had chosen as a member of a major touring act was simply not something that would allow him to maintain the relationship. "Heaven Beside You" was written about the end of the same relationship.
• Careful with That Axe: Layne's screams at the beginning of "Them Bones" and one in the middle of "Sickman."
• Circus of Fear: The video for "I Stay Away", made even creepier by the use of somewhat grotesque puppets. The song itself doesn't really have much to do with the trope.
• Concept Album:
  • The eponymous album; with the exception of two of the singles (and "Over Now"), every song on it was written by Layne Staley about addiction.
  • To a lesser extent, Dirt, as many of the lyrics are in some way about a gloomy topic like death, depression, or addiction ("Rooster", which is about Jerry's father's experiences in Vietnam, and "Down in a Hole" about a failed relationship are both depressing enough to qualify; "Dam That River", which was about an incident where Cantrell and Kinney got into a fight that ended with the latter smashing the former over the head with a coffee table, may be the lightest song lyrically, and that's if you don't interpret it as having a Dual-Meaning Chorus about Gary Ridgway dumping his kills in the Green River).
• Cover Drop: The music video of "Grind" from the self-titled album features a three-legged dog (named "Sunshine" by the band) identical to the one on the album's cover.
• Darker and Edgier: Their first album, while dark and moody, still had traces of their old glam sound. Dirt dispensed with the glam elements and cranked up the angst and despair. The Self-Titled Album manages to go even further, with an extremely bleak atmosphere throughout and some of the darkest lyrics in the band's catalog.
• Destructive Romance: The narrator of "Sea of Sorrow" is escaping one of these while telling their ex that without them, their problems are theirs alone and they no longer have a crutch to rely on while they continue being dysfunctional.
• Determinator: Kinney almost didn't play on Facelift because he had broken his hand; Greg Gilmore of Mother Love Bone was slated to do session drums for the album. The producer felt that it wouldn't be the same without Kinney, however, and so Kinney wound up taking his cast off and recording drums with a broken hand, a bucket of ice by his side at all times for whenever the pain became unbearable.
• Doom Metal: They could be seen as a more alternative take on the genre, especially in Dirt and Alice in Chains, given the slow tempos, heavy invokedEpic Riffs and serious subject matter. However, select songs such as "Hate to Feel" can be considered straight-up doom.
• Drugs Are Bad: Very, very bad; many of their songs, especially on Dirt, are about drugs' destructive influence and the pain they've caused. This becomes invokedHarsher in Hindsight when you consider that Layne Staley and Mike Starr later died from drug overdoses.
• Dual-Meaning Chorus:
  • There are multiple theories on the meaning of the chorus in "Would?" and also several regarding "Dam That River"; the latter is definitely referring to the uncontrolled bleeding from a head wound that Sean Kinney gave Jerry Cantrell after he smashed him over the head with a coffee table (confirmed by invokedWord of God), but it could very well be referring to Gary Ridgway's habit of dumping the bodies of his victims in the Green River as well.
  • "God Am" has three potential meanings. It's obviously a pun on the word "goddamn", but it also refers to the well-known name of God which is often translated as "I Am". It could also be construed as a way of emphasizing the idea of God being far beyond human understanding, using broken Engrish like a small child might.
• Dying Alone: Layne Staley ended up dying in his apartment alone—it took two weeks before anyone even realized he was dead.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: AIC started out in the late 80s as a glam metal band, which is very apparent in early demo songs like "I Can't Have You Blues" and "Social Parasite". Facelift had all of the standard AIC elements firmly in place, but their glam roots were extremely prominent, especially in the songs on the album's latter half. Additionally, while the lyrical content was hardly sunshine and rainbows, it wasn't nearly as bleak and depressing as on subsequent albums.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: As a teenager, Layne changed his middle name to Thomas (after Tommy Lee) because he hated his given one: Rutherford.
• Epic Rocking: They have several songs between six and eight minutes long. The only song over eight minutes is "Frogs" at 8:18.
• Et Tu, Brute?: "Again".
  Hey, let them do it again, yeah
  Hey, you said you were my friend
  Hey, turn me upside down, Oh
  Hey, feelin' so down.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Rain When I Die" does this.
• Funk Metal: “I Know Something (‘Bout You)” flirts with this.
• Genre-Busting: Have incorporated influences ranging from Doom Metal, Grunge, Alternative Rock, Hard Rock, Hardcore Punk, Blues, and even Country Music into their sound at various points. Alternative Metal is really the only genre label that is relatively uncontroversial when describing them.
• Gone Horribly Right: After his parents' divorce, Layne became convinced that his father would return if he became a celebrity. Fast-forward 15 years, Layne is a famous rock star, his father does get in contact with him...and then both of them fell into heroin abuse.
• Grief Song: "Get Born Again", "Would?", "Down In A Hole", and "Died". And especially "Over Now." And a good portion of Black Gives Way to Blue, especially the title song.
• Hair Metal: Started out as this, as some 1980s demos will demonstrate; while they obviously shed all traces of it later on, there were still some very noticeable traces left over from that era on Facelift, particularly on the second half.
• I Am the Band: Jerry Cantrell has been this since Layne's death. Sean Kinney is the second most prominent member having also been there since the beginning.
• Important Haircut: About the same time Layne began using heroin, he cut off his signature dreadlocks.
• In Name Only: To no one's surprise, there are some that categorically refuse to accept the "new" Alice in Chains, having derided DuVall's voice and songwriting talents as less than Staley's well before Black Gives Way to Blue was released (even though Cantrell has done most of the singing since that album).
• Lead Singer Plays Lead Guitar: Zig-zagged. Cantrell, who is largely the only member to perform guitar, plays the lead parts in comparison to Staley and DuVall's occasional, more rhythmic guitar inputs. Cantrell is predominantly the lead singer in the DuVall-era material, but DuVall takes that role for current live performances of the Staley-era work, on top of never playing guitar in it.
• Lighter and Softer: Downplayed with the William DuVall albums. Musically, they have the same heavy guitar riffs and pummeling sound as the Layne Staley albums. However, the lyrics and songwriting are decidedly less negative and despairing. This could probably be attributed to the band, as a whole, being much older and wiser (not to mention, mostly drug-free) by the time of their late-2000s comeback.

• The Lost Lenore: Demri Lara Parrott, Layne's ex-fiancee. After her own steady slide into addiction culminated in a fatal overdose in 1996, Layne fell into a severe depressive low and was placed on suicide watch; Mark Lanegan, who was a close friend of Staley's, specifically pinpointed this as the point where Layne just stopped caring about life and majorly accelerated his decline.
• Loudness War: Both Black Gives Way to Blue and The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here are extremely loud in comparison to the Staley-era albums.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "No Excuses" sounds like an upbeat song, but its lyrics are about Layne's addiction alienating him from the band.
  • "Real Thing", the closing track of Facelift, is about a drug user^note Not based on Staley; Facelift was recorded before his heroin addiction that started to take a toll on him, and the lyrics make subtle references to cocaine being the drug in question. who rejects his friends' concern for help. Just like other songs on the second half of Facelift, the song retains the album's glam-esque style despite the gloomy lyrics.
  • "Check My Brain" has a relatively poppy chorus where Jerry (a former addict) wonders why the hell he ever moved to an environment like Los Angeles.
• Madness Mantra: "Love Song."
• Metal Scream:
  • Sometimes used really effectively by Layne.
    Heeeeeeere, here comes the rooster,
    AH YEAH!
    YOU KNOW HE AIN'T GONNA DIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!
  • Tom Araya provides one in his guest appearance on "Iron Gland."
• Murder Ballad:
  • "Dam That River", maybe. It was definitely about Cantrell and Kinney getting into a fight that resulted in Kinney getting so angry that he picked up a coffee table and smashed Cantrell over the head with it, and the song was Cantrell's middle finger to Kinney in regard to that chain of events. A few may interpret it as having a dual meaning as a song about Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who was still active and at large at the time that the song was written and had racked up an immense body count in the King County area.
  • "Love, Hate, Love" is absolutely about a serial killer, however. The lyrics wouldn't be out of place in a Slayer song.
• New Sound Album:
  • Dirt sounds very different from Facelift, having a more Doom Metal sound and completely excising all of the last vestiges of their Glam Metal days.
  • The self-titled album was also different from Dirt, with a few psychedelic influences and the heavier songs being more Sludge Metal than straight doom metal.
  • Naturally, after a long Hiatus, Black Gives Way to Blue also sounds unique from its predecessors.
  • The trope was finally averted by The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, which, while still sounding distinct and having its own voice, was just a natural streamlined progression from Black Gives Way to Blue.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: "I Know Somethin (Bout You)" features some prominent funk influences, a sound found nowhere else in Alice In Chains' discography.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Layne. Like Kurt Cobain, he is regularly seen as a dour, morose figure, and while this was quite true during the final few years of his life, the reality is that for most of his life, Layne was a silly, lighthearted, fun dude with a goofy, irreverent sense of humor who would always come up with something ridiculous just to make his friends and bandmates laugh.
• Power Ballad: "Down in a Hole", a love song from the perspective of a depressed and conflicted person.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "IF! I! WOULD! COULD! YOU!"
• Re-Cut: Dirt sort of got one almost immediately after its original release. The band looked at the tracklisting and noticed that "Down In A Hole" was the second to last track. Since they wanted the album to loosely tell a story from song to song^note Although, contrary to popular belief, Dirt is not meant to be a full-fledged Concept Album or Rock Opera., they requested that the song be placed between "Rain When I Die" and "Sickman." Thus, all pressings of Dirt released after its first few months on the market have "Down In A Hole" placed as the fourth rather than twelfth track.
• Religion Rant Song:
  • "Bleed the Freak" and "Get Born Again" are fairly straightforward "Christianity is silly" songs, especially the latter.
  • "God Am" is a pretty straightforward Type One example in its verses, with Layne asking God why He seemingly does nothing while horrible things are happening in the world.
  • "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" is a little ambiguous in that, while it mostly seems to be from the perspective of a holier-than-thou person and references both the titular belief and hatred of homosexuals ("Jesus don't like a queer") in the chorus, the song later argues that there's no problem with religious faith itself, but there is a problem with using religion to scare people.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: "Rooster" is about Jerry Cantrell's father's harrowing experiences during The Vietnam War. ^note The song's title comes from his father's lifelong nickname, as per Word of God. Fan theories include ideas that the 101st Airborne Division in which he served had a bald eagle in their insignia, and since bald eagles are unknown in Vietnam, the Vietnamese called them "chicken men".
• Signature Style: Largely slower-paced material with a distinctly metallic bent, heavy usage of odd time signatures, relatively simple leadwork that involves large amounts of wah, and an extremely heavy focus on eerie vocal harmonies and tradeoffs. Jerry's riffing also tends to involve relatively unconventional usage of bends to create an uneasy, disorienting feel ("It Ain't Like That" and "Check My Brain" being good examples).
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: They were relentlessly cynical during the Layne Staley years. The William DuVall albums, though by no means idealistic, are much more optimistic (see the song "Lesson Learned", for an example of a more lyrically optimistic AIC song).
• Sludge Metal: Starting with Dirt, strengthening in Alice In Chains, and now this is their default metal style upon their revival (listen to "Lab Monkey" or "Acid Bubble").
• Soprano and Gravel: Their characteristic harmonies, usually with Layne/William having the strangled nasal whine and Jerry the smoother tone, though Jerry seems to do the nasal every once in a while. Also Ann Wilson, Chris Cornell, and Mark Arm's contributions to Sap.
• Speech Impediment: Layne developed an "'s' as 'sh'" one in his later days, thanks to his missing front teeth and drug-induced high. This is most audible in the MTV Unplugged performance.
• Spell My Name With An S: In their glam days, was Alice 'N Chains spelled with an S or a Z? It doesn't help that Layne was inconsistent about it on their fliers.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Drummer Sean Kinney sings lead vocals (actually just yelling the "lyrics" into a megaphone) on "Love Song" from the Sap EP. In fact, all the band members switch instruments on that track^note Staley plays drums and Cantrell and Starr trade instruments. There's also old camcorder footage of them screwing around in their rehearsal space once, with Staley playing a very basic kick-snare-kick-snare beat and Kinney rolling around on the ground shrieking. They captioned it with a scroll which read: WARNING - SINGER DRUMMING, DRUMMER SINGING
• Surreal Music Video:
  • From the Staley era: "We Die Young," "Angry Chair," "I Stay Away," and "Grind."
  • From the DuVall era (so far): "Lesson Learned" and "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here."
• Technician Versus Performer:
  • Present in the Staley-era lineup with Cantrell as the Technician and Staley as the Performer. Cantrell, who had some knowledge of theory and used to be choir president in high school, wrote songs in a deliberate, involved manner in general. Staley, on the other hand, had little actual musical experience and was more or less self-taught; his few songwriting contributions were often unconventional in style due to this.
  • Averted with the current lineup, as DuVall was a guitar player first and foremost, and his writing contributions are typically more aggressive and reminiscent of their Facelift-era material; Cantrell even mentioned how much of a paradigm shift it was.
• Token Black: Averted with Will Duvall. His race is rarely (if ever) emphasized by the band, and fans simply see him as a worthy replacement for Layne Staley rather than “the black guy in an otherwise white band.”
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: "We Die Young" was inspired by Jerry Cantrell's reaction to watching young children dealing drugs while he was taking the bus to rehearsal after Kinney had kicked him out of their apartment following a fight.
• Uncommon Time: Many Cantrell-written tracks use this.
  • "Them Bones" alternates between 7/8 during the verses and 4/4 during the choruses.
  • "Rain When I Die" alternates between 6/4 during the verses and 4/4 during the choruses. "Hollow" from The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is also written this way.
  • "Nothin' Song", off of self-titled, averts this. Although the verses have a weird drumbeat throughout, all of it is in 4/4. "God Am" from the same album also counts.
  • "All Secrets Known", off of Black Gives Way To Blue, is written almost entirely in 6/4, save for a small interlude, which is in common time.
  • The second riff from "Acid Bubble", also from the aforementioned album, is written in 12/4, with a drumbeat in 4/4.
  • The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here's title track has breakdowns in 7/8.
• Word Salad Lyrics: "Nothin' Song" is pretty much just nonsensical rambling put to a song, but the outright disjointed strangeness of the lyrics actually helps show you just how deteriorated Layne was becoming at this point.
• Yarling: Layne Staley was one of the standard-bearers of the style, best demonstrated by how he sang the opening line of "Man in the Box", "I'm the man in the box", as "Ahhhhm th' meeeiin in th' bahks..."

---