### Alice In Chains: The devil put dinosaurs here

#### 03/08/13 || The Duff

You’ve definitely got one big Alice in Chains fan here, and their reunion, new album was certainly not undervalued. “Black gives Way to Blue” was an indulgence that levelled prior masterpieces and added new aspects to the AIC sound. What’s more, the thought irreplaceable Layne Staley turned out in fact to be entirely replaceable. Sacrilege you say, but Bobby Duvall has proven to have earned his stripes and then some, despairingly buried in the album mix and allowed to shine freer in a live setting.

Now four years on, we come to the important sophomore record of this line-up, and firstly I would have thought the performance on his first AIC record would earn Bobby some wiggle room insofar as his placement in the follow-up’s mix to be concerned. Not so, despairingly yet again, despite being by far the most talented vocalist of the two, we find Jerry as the band’s now seemingly new frontman. This is a big shame seeing as Duvall didn’t seem to be just sharpening his teeth on “Black Gives Way…”.

Initially, one would think this due to fan backlashes as to a new vocalist at all, turns out this might well be a permanent arrangement, and this is where the music lets the record down; Jerry’s knack for quality riffing has turned into very repetitive, the focus on “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here” spent on layering, strong songwriting, but very few truly remarkable AIC vocal harmonies, leads, or even fat, stomping crowd-pleasers.

Lyrically, the album is a disappointment as well. When drug/booze/misery-addled, Jerry Cantrell wrote lyrics of such depth, abstract beauty; here we find something that is pedestrian in comparison, easy to make sense of with the occasional flash of brilliance. It would be easy to make the snap-judgement of calling the album a failure on the lyrical front having experienced the magic of “Degradation Trip”, but it certainly has its pleasures nonetheless lyrically.

So the album’s strengths are the production and the vocal hooks, the swarming guitar effects and, admittedly, the odd breathtaking lead, such as “Breath on a Window” the 3:02 mark and “Hung on a Hook” at 3:52 (and of course Jerry’s solos which are as consistently wholesome as a bag of Doritos – “Pretty Done” being a fine example).

“Hung on a Hook” definitely gets my Layne-stiffy powering hard, where Bobby literally sounds like Layne back from the dead, but as mentioned, for the most part vocally it is a collaboration between the two, Jerry taking top-spot as with his solo outputs (the verse of “Choke” I’d add sounding most like his upbeat “Boggy Depot” period – the 1:17 mark reminding me of a rare period in the frontman’s career).

Not as strong as “Black Gives Way to Blue”, but there is a sense of less filler, a more varied, well-rounded effort, a bit more hard-rocking, back-to-basics feel; the doom of “Lab Monkey”, the title track pre-chorus and the “Phantom Limb” chorus, the Slayer-influence of both the “Phantom Limb” opening riff and the title track’s clean, delayed melody, the crowd-pleasing, heavy “Stone” and “Hollow”, the album’s singles.

Merged with the traditional acoustic AIC dirges and upbeat, stadium rockers (“Low Ceiling”, “Breath on a Window”), hints of psychedelia; dark and light introspection, as per the AIC standard, the one exception being “Voices” which overloads the cheese as with “Take Her Out” on the 2009 effort

At the end of the day, the boys know what they’re doing and have yet to put a foot wrong, really, Alice in Chains remain one of the best hard-rock bands of the last twenty years; a solid record in their discography that should keep fans happy, if only not as staggeringly good as everything released prior.

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Capitol
- Website: www.aliceinchains.com
- Band
- Jerry Cantrell: vocals, guitars
- William DuVall: vocals, guitars
- Sean Kinney: drums, percussion
- Mike Inez: bass, vocals

- Tracklist
- 01. Hollow
- 02. Pretty Done
- 03. Stone
- 04. Voices
- 05. The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
- 06. Lab Monkey
- 07. Low Ceiling
- 08. Breath On A Window
- 09. Scalpel
- 10. Phantom Limb
- 11. Hung On A Hook
- 12. Choke