Earlier this year (2009), Alice In Chains toured Australia for the first time since the early 90s and with an audience (myself included) ready to shit-can the reformed band with new singer William DuVall, they managed to absolutely blow them, and me, away with a tirade of drone-metal hits.
Now, almost a year later, that line up have released their first album ‘Black Gives Way To Blue’, and like that gig, an audience ready to pay it out might want to rethink their preconceptions.
I can say I was ready to shit-can the band, because Alice in Chains held a special place in my heart growing up as an angry teenager. More than a special place, they were one of my favourite bands in the world, and anyone who has felt that attachment just doesn’t want to hear a new singer playing those songs.
DuVall’s strength is also his weakness. He sounds remarkably like the late (original lead singer) Layne Staley. In some ways this is what makes this such a great album. Listening to a track like ‘Check My Brain’, which has that grainy straining vocal over guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s detuned power-riffs, you would never think Staley was gone.
This uncanny similarity does leave the band open for criticism. When The Doors of the 21st Century toured with Ian Astbury on vocals, he was (rightfully) slammed for his faux-Morrison dance moves, but DuVall seems to pull it off with respect and dignity.
The album is so jam packed with awesomely heavy riffs that it’s nigh on impossible to single any out, but ‘Last Of My Kind’ is up there with the best.
As anyone who remembers the band knows, they weren’t all about bone-crunching guitars; they also pulled off heart-wrenching ballads and this tradition hasn’t been forgotten here.
The first ballad, ‘Your Decision’ feels like Cantrell’s view of Staley with the benefit of hindsight. “Time to change has come and gone/watched your fears become your god” he writes in the opening line.
The title track is amongst the most melodic the band have ever attempted (partially thanks to piano by Elton John. Seriously.). In it, Cantrell details his own life battles, saying “I don’t want to feel no more/it’s easier to keep falling/imitations are pale/emptiness... all tomorrows”. It’s lyrics like these that few bands could get away with with a straight face, but for Alice in Chains it feels like it comes from an honest place.
The beauty of the original band was that Staley could take Cantrell’s lyrics and make them his own. The staggering thing about DuVall is that he can do it just as well.
So few bands in the past have successfully survived the death of their singer. AC/DC survived Bon Scott, Joy Division became New Order and continued after the death of Ian Curtis and now with ‘Black Gives Way To Blue’, Alice in Chains are going to survive for many years to come and while my music tastes have changed since my angry puberty-fuelled years and Alice don’t have the same heavy rotation as they once had in my house, this album is definitely going down as one of the best of 2009.
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