YMMV / Alice in Chains

• Anvilicious: Pretty much the only way Dirt could be less subtle is if it consisted of nothing but Layne screaming "HEROIN RUINED MY LIFE" over and over again for an hour. ^note Except for "Rooster", which is screaming "THE VIETNAM WAR WAS HELL!" for over six minutes, "Dam That River", which is Cantrell saying "Hey, Sean, fuck you for smashing a coffee table over my head, asshole", and "Them Bones", which is two minutes and thirty seconds of "life sucks and then you die". And he was absolutely right! Anyone with similar addictions would be wise to take it as a cautionary tale.
• Awesome Music: So much to choose from. Dirt and Jar of Flies in their respective entireties are considered their absolute best work, with The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here as a close third.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
  • "Iron Gland."
  • "Love Song". Just listen to it. It's likely that they were extremely drunk and/or high when they recorded it, but nothing has been confirmed.
• Bizarro Episode: The Sap EP, the song "Right Turn" in particular. Staley and Cantrell had Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Mark Arm of Mudhoney guest star in that track. The results are weird to say the least, especially the ending harmony with Staley, Cornell, and Arm's wildly contrasting vocal styles.
• Broken Base:
  • There's quite a bit of debate over the quality of the band's Self-Titled Album. Some like it for its drearier, druggier (if you can believe it!) tone, while others hate it for those very reasons. A few have also complained about its sound and production being slightly more mainstream.
  • Fans are divided on whether William DuVall is any good as the lead vocalist or not, which is rather moot, seeing that Cantrell is usually the lead singer from Black Gives Way to Blue onwards, while DuVall is mostly relegated to that role for the Staley-era songs performed live.
  • If you're on the side that doesn't like Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, then you think the band took their surge of interest from the comeback and put out a follow-up that just went thud.
  • Rainier Fog. A worthy modern Alice in Chains entry that does a far better job at recapturing the feel of the Layne era than the previous two, a good but unremarkable post-Layne release, or a boring trudge that sounds like any number of their copycats? Fans who didn't like The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here are more likely to enjoy it, while the other way around tends to happen to fans who did like the former album.
• Covered Up: There are people who don't know "Them Bones" or "Angry Chair" but have heard versions of them in Doom II: Hell on Earth.
• Epic Riff: Many — the talk box guitar opening of "Man in the Box", the main riff in "Rooster", the bass intro to "Would?", and the distorted guitar line in "Grind" are some of the best examples.
  • The bass riff in "Angry Chair." Full stop.
  • The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here gives us "Pretty Done", "Hollow" and "Phantom Limb".
  • The Lyrical Cold Open + guitar combo in "Them Bones" qualifies as well.
• Even Better Sequel: Facelift is a great musical work in itself, but Dirt was one of the defining albums of the '90s along with Nirvana's Nevermind and Soundgarden's Superunknown. Dirt also solidified their sound as a sludgy, dark toned, mournful metal band, dropping all of their remaining glam elements.
• Fan Nickname: Fans usually refer to the self-titled album as Tripod because of the three-legged dog on the cover^note Which was based on an actual dog with such a name that was used to terrorize Kinney (who designed the cover himself) in his childhood.. It has also been called Lucky, based on an old joke.
• Fandom Rivalry: Alice in Chains fans are often at odds with Nirvana and Soundgarden fans.
• Gateway Series: Alice in Chains was an intro to Heavy Metal for many older metalheads, and served as a gateway to many heavier bands and subgenres of metal.
• Genre Turning Point: Along with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains inspired the sound of many Post-Grunge bands such as Nickelback, Godsmack, and Staind, maybe moreso than any of their grunge contemporaries. In fact, they've inspired so many bands that their music may sound like generic post-grunge to the uninitiated.
• Growing the Beard:
  • Most fans will agree that Dirt was when they truly found their voice. While Facelift is still loved by the fans, many complain that the second half of the album sounds too much like their hair metal roots.
  • The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is viewed as the band's second incarnation coming into their own. While Black Gives Way to Blue had a fairly divisive reception, Devil was better-received overall for having a tighter, more consistent sound.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The last song Layne ever recorded with the band was "Died".
  • Many of their songs qualify, but "Angry Chair" sums it up perfectly about Staley's life, especially with the lines, "Saw my reflection and cried. So little hope that I died."
  • "We Die Young" becomes immensely disconcerting following Staley's death, especially as it unwittingly points to both how he died (drug overdose) and when (far too soon).
• The Law of Fan Jackassery: Ever since the band's decline from popularity in the mid '90s, the fanbase has fallen dead square at the peak, as most of it consists of the worst elements of both gatekeeping metalheads and grunge fans who refuse to change with the times.
• Misaimed Fandom: Staley hated it when people would say they shot up to Dirt.
• Mis-blamed: William DuVall for Black Gives Way to Blue, as Jerry Cantrell sings on much of the album, though some people who dislike it will acknowledge this fact.
• Narm: As "Right Turn" starts to conclude, Mark Arm from Mudhoney monotonously drawls "We ain't riiiiiiiiiiiight".
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The cover for◊ Facelift can look quite unnerving to some.
  • "Sickman". "Though I walk through the valley... of rape... and despair..."
  • "Rooster," though it's more tragic than scary.
  • "Angry Chair." The bass riff is the thing of nightmares.
  • Despite Dirt being this alone, the self-titled album is much darker and extremely sludgy, consisting of one of the creepiest chords ever on most of the songs; it's easily the most disturbing album by the band. Think of Dirt as the disaster but this as the aftermath. One has to mention the bleak packaging of the album along with the nightmarish inserts, of which the cover's three-legged dog is just the beginning. The vintage-style images on the lyric sheets include mutated animals at a trial, medical sketches of a man and a woman with leg braces, some skull architecture, a deformed fairy, a pig with severed legs, a dying patient in bed, a sinister-looking bottle in the ocean with a face and arms, some type of creature with teeth and tentacles terrorizing a variety of little humanoids, and a donkey-headed skeletal figure. Not a cheerful product in the slightest.
    • Of all the nightmarish songs on the self-titled album, a special mention goes to "Nothin' Song", which is deeply unnerving both musically and lyrically, and is probably one of the clearest glimpses into just how thoroughly compromised Layne was by that point.
• Replacement Scrappy: Some fans tend to think this of William DuVall, although to be fair, there probably wasn't anyone who would have met their satisfaction. Ironically, William tends to be a replacement lead singer almost exclusively for the older Layne Staley songs. For most of the newer material, he's typically only doing harmony and/or backup vocals.
• Signature Song: "Man in the Box", "Them Bones", "Would?" and "No Excuses" for the Staley era, "Check My Brain", "Your Decision" and "Hollow" for the DuVall era. "Down in a Hole" is the signature ballad for both eras.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Jerry's solo albums Boggy Depot and Degradation Trip are considered to be continuations of the Layne Staley era, Degradation Trip specifically being one to Dirt.
  • "Private Hell" from Black Gives Way to Blue is generally considered to be this to Dirt's "Down in a Hole". "Private Hell" in turn has its own spiritual successor in the form of "Choke" on The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Jar of Flies is often noted for its incredibly dreamy music and production, especially songs like "Rotten Apple" and "No Excuses." Despite the otherwise characteristically depressing lyrics, listening to the EP all the way through can be a downright relaxing experience.
• Ugly Cute: The weird lemur-dog thing in the "Angry Chair" video.
• The Woobie: Oh God, Layne... A lot of the songs he wrote tell a story of a man falling into total despair due to a drug addiction he can't break free from and a girl who he wishes would stay with him, all reflective of his real life struggles with heroin and a fiancée who would succumb to heroin before he did.

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