Band: Alice in Chains

[Speedie]

I thought "Black Gives Way To Blue" was a pretty good record.

Dug "Man in the Box" when I was 20...

mehh

[Chromodynamic]

I revisited it recently and it's pretty much a concept album about how awesome heroin is. Fucking stupid.

Maybe this just means I'm naive, but I never thought Dirt was intended to glorify drug use. The lyrics may not be all that intelligent, but that doesn't equal a heroin-chic pose to me. Heroin chic is still something like the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Dirt is still, at heart, someone (e.g. Mr. Staley) who's fully aware of the mental gymnastics he has to do in order to justify his drug abuse (e.g. "Junkhead," "Godsmack").

I'm with you on this and when you add in the fate of Staley, not just his death but the circumstances around how he was discovered, and the condition he was in when he died.. it makes me shudder.

[oZZma]

Wow I expected it to be quite divisive but I didn't expect ALL this hate.
I grew up with this band and honestly I get the “hair metal" "cock rock" thing only in regards to the first album (which is the worst alrhough has a couple of good songs)
Dirt and the Tripod were a lot more complex and refined, “God am“ or “Rain when I die“ for example... Great songs IMO.
And the use of vocal entwines between Staley and Cantrell is really beatutiful.
Not crap with some waffles

[mattw]

I come back to the S/T one a lot (aka Tripod, Three-Legged Dog, whatever). I particularly like the guitar sound on it.

[zircona1]

Not crap for Dirt (the album), and a few other tracks. I bought the Music Bank box set when it was released, mostly b/c I didn't own much music by them. Their earliest songs show them to be a GnR/sunset strip-sounding hard rock band, which kind of surprised me.

I haven't listened to anything they've done with the new lead singer, don't really have much interest in doing so. Good on them for soldiering on, I guess.

I always liked 'Cut You In' from Jerry Cantrell's first solo record.

[tmidgett]

Not crap, I guess.

I think they were the best, improbably, of the huge bands out of the Pac NW that were not called Nirvana.

Which is not saying ever so very much, but so it is.

Good rhythm section. Some good riffs.

I did like Staley's voice, among the Big Voices of the day. It made me laugh a lot, even when the music didn't work.

The early stuff is bad. Dirt is a pretty good record. Dark. Focused in its blinkered way.

They were emblematic of a part of the whole Seattle thing that I found repellent on a personal level. It was hedonistic and dangerous, took a toll on a lot of people, but that's subculture for you. It was also ultimately pretty stupid, which is harder to forgive.

With some distance, I can sort of see what was intoxicating about it for those who got sucked into it. I feel a lot more empathetic towards them now than I did when I was forced to deal with it on a daily basis.

That said, I listened to High Rise II yesterday, for the first time in several years, and I would rather play that record every day for the rest of my life than have to listen to Dirt in its entirety once a year.