While we’d be hard-pressed to call a record that’s been certified double-platinum an overlooked effort, Alice in Chains’ 1995 self-titled album is perhaps the underdog of the grunge band’s classic Nineties period.
Following 1992’s drug-weary but music-world-dominating Dirt, as well as the band’s chart-topping Jar of Flies EP, Alice in Chains delivered some of the doomiest dirges the group had laid to tape yet — though also some of their prettiest. In the years since, countless fans have waded through its sludge and let it creep into their heads.
While the sessions yielded a number of sonic triumphs, the album was produced as the band were facing addiction struggles and inner turmoil. Notably, it’d be the final album they made with founding lead vocalist Layne Staley, who passed away in 2002. And it marked the last Alice in Chains album to be released until their 2009 comeback classic, Black Gives Way to Blue.
With all this in mind, we asked Revolver readers which song has become the ultimate statement piece on Alice in Chans’ self-titled album. These are their picks, ranked accordingly.
“Grind”
A pointed first single and opening track, “Grind” wah-slammed its way to radio and MTV as a defiant statement of intent from a band sick of the rumors that surrounded them by the mid Nineties — from various Staley-related death hoaxes to the assumed implosion of Alice in Chains. While it’d been true that there was trouble behind the scenes, Alice in Chains, at least by this point, were still firmly grinding out top-tier grunge-sludge.
“You’d be well advised not to plan my funeral ‘fore the body dies,” Cantrell smoothly sneers in its opening lines, ahead of interlocking with Staley on a golden-rayed grunge chorus. The guitarist later referred to it as a “Fuck You” song for the gossip mongers in 1999’s Music Bank box set.
“Heaven Beside You”
While “Heaven Beside You” is rooted in the semi-acoustic gentleness of Alice in Chains’ Sap and Jar of Flies EPs, that doesn’t stop Cantrell from ripping out pure hellfire with the distortion-scorched, bend-quaked micro-solos he affixes to the piece.
Written following the guitarist’s break-up with a longtime girlfriend, the doomed love song alludes to fractured relationships and being torn apart by see-sawing emotions (“Heaven beside you, hell within”).
It’s also notably one of the myriad chills-inducing Alice in Chains songs to expertly and achingly entwine Staley and Cantrell’s vocal harmonies.
“God Am”
“I’m not fine, fuck pretending.”
Layne Staley was rarely candid about his struggles with addiction — indeed, the frank, poetic, personal and pained lyrics he put onto Dirt are a major part of why that juggernaut LP stood out from the rest of the grunge and metal scene in 1992.
“God Am” follows that model, but a touch more existentially. Atop an infectiously dark-judded blues-metal groove, Alice in Chains’ frontman shares a conversation with a “grinnin’” God about the futility of devotion — especially when the deity always ends up weeding out the “sick ones.” And goddamn, is it a crushing listen.
“Shame in You”
Magnetic and subversively poppy, “Shame in You” is another staggering, stand-out heart-tugger on Alice in Chains, and Revolver readers know it.
Staley’s lyrics lays it plain that there’s something wrong — sweetly delivered yet steeped in sorrow, he weighs in on sins, shame and “shared pain.” It plays perhaps as another addiction allegory as he wails: “And you must change/Patterns all we trained/Or ne’er regain peace you seek.”
There’s no shame in coming second place when you’re as good as this.
“Sludge Factory”
At over seven-minutes long, “Sludge Factory” is an an extended, tension-filled slice of dread driven by a jazz-messed backbeat and murky, ooze-dripping power chords. Cantrell contrasts said distortion-glazed sludginess with clean-toned, yet uncouth soloing.
Staley’s melodious yowls are mean-spirited and meta, here taking aim at record execs and “corporate ignorance” demanding the band churn out “brilliance” ASAP.
Despite that unwelcome pressure, Alice in Chains sent this out of the factory and got the their fans’ enduring stamp of approval.