Alice in Chains 'Black Gives Way To Blue'

Alice In Chains
Black Gives Way To Blue
(EMI)

Over the years, I’ve had a strange, protracted relationship with Seattle band Alice In Chains. Their 1993 Australian tour was one of my first concert experiences and at the time I played their Dirt album until the cassette began to warp. Yet something - even in the early days of my infatuation - always felt amiss with the band. Dirt was dark but also a little simplistic and camp, adding to which, they dressed and acted more than a little like (gasp!) glam metal dudes, something my seventeen year old self considered a very serious crime indeed.

As it turned out, Alice In Chains were one of the first bands I grew out of. (As it turned out, they did used to be a glam metal band. Called Diamond Lie. Check their press kit and amazing glam pic out for proof - \m/ - Ed). After we parted ways, things didn’t go so well for them. The band’s follow-up albums never capitalised on their early success and they slowly ground to a halt as singer Layne Stanley went from a caricature of the heroin addicted rock star to a much more extreme and sad - and no doubt more realistic - depiction of one. At the time of his death, Stanley was a decaying recluse; his remains went undiscovered for a fortnight. Meanwhile guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell struggled to build a solo career, one that often utilised his former band’s key personnel: drummer Sean Kinney and bass player Mike Inez, two names, funnily enough, I just recalled from memory. Maybe I was a bigger fan than I remember? It would partially explain my positive reaction to the band’s new reformation album.

On first listen, Black Gives Way To Blue sounds confident and assured. It is, if nothing else, a cohesive heavy rock album. Attentive fans will have noticed how integral Cantrell’s vocal work and song writing was to the original line-up and as such the success of this new offering largely hinges on him here. Luckily, Cantrell arrives at the table with a fine batch of melodies, riffs and moods for the band to batter into familiar shapes. All the group's standards are accounted for: gloomy dirges ('All Secrets Known', 'A Looking In View'), gothic acoustica ('Your Decision', 'When The Sun Rose Again'), rockier material; the chorus of 'Check My Brain', took me right back, past Dirt to 1990’s Facelift. New vocalist William DuVall is capable enough but he’s best felt as a part of a whole rather than front and centre. In fact Black Gives Way To Blue works best when he takes the harmonies instead of the leads.

Not that the album is without its share of significant faults. 'Last Of My Kind' is a dud, no question, and elsewhere the band overindulge in histrionic guitar leads, ill-advised production flourishes and shitty lyrics (samples: ‘Take what I wanted/And break all the lies that they feed/The fuckin’ liars;’ ‘Tears that filled my bong’). And then there is - no I’m not joking - a cameo from Elton John on the title track.