Alice In Chains’ 1995 self-titled third album was the beginning of the end for the grunge titans’ classic line-up but it’s a miracle it got made at all. The Seattle quartet were in absolute disarray in the wake of their era-defining, multi-million-selling 1992 second record Dirt and at various points in the run-up to what became Alice In Chains, it appeared doubtful that they might ever get it together to make a follow-up.
Chief, although not solely to blame, to their inner-turmoil was frontman Layne Staley’s heroin addiction. Things came to a head in summer 1994, the day before a planned tour in support of Metallica. Staley arrived at rehearsal high and drummer Sean Kinney stormed out, declaring he would never play with Staley again. The dates with Metallica were nixed and Alice In Chains went their separate ways for six months, unsure if they would ever come back together again.
“At first I was dumbfounded,” Staley recounted to Rolling Stone about that split. “I just sat on my couch staring at the TV and getting drunk every day. When we first got together as a band, we were all brothers. We lived in the same house and partied together and drank as much as each other. But then we started to split apart and went different ways, and we felt like we were betraying each other.”
Somewhere in amongst that hiatus, Staley’s creativity was in full flow – it was during this period that he formed the superlative side-project Mad Season and recorded the band’s only album.
Despite that, rumours abounded that Alice In Chains had split for good and, worse, that Staley was dead. “I was in San Francisco at Lollapalooza,” Staley remembered, “and this girl walked up to me and stopped like she’d seen a ghost. And she said, ‘You’re not dead.’ And I said, ‘No, you’re right’.”
Whilst Staley was doing that, Cantrell was at home writing songs he intended for a solo project that he ended up redirecting into Alice In Chains’ third album instead. He wasn’t quite ready to abandon the band with which he’d made his name.
“I'm too much of a sentimental fuck,” he told Guitar World at the time. “I don't want to play with another band. I didn't feel I could put something else out that could top what Alice In Chains could do together."
Cantrell brought drummer Sean Kinney and new bassist Mike Inez back into the fold to flesh out those ideas at the beginning of 1995 and a few months later, Staley was invited to return as well. Little did they know that this would be the last time they’d make a record together, but there was a sentimentality in the air when they spoke to Rolling Stone in 1996.
“We let shit come straight out on this one,” Cantrell said. “It was often depressing and getting it done felt like pulling hair out but it was the fucking coolest thing, and I’m glad to have gone through it. I will cherish the memory forever.” “I’ll cherish it forever, too, just because this one I can remember doing,” added Staley.
It was a record that offered up a reflection of the dark times the four-piece found themselves in. For a band who doesn’t exactly have a Shiny Happy People in their catalogue, Alice In Chains was their grimiest, murkiest effort yet.
The titles hinted at the mired circumstances they found themselves in – Grind, Sludge Factory, Shame In You – and the combination of brutally honest lyrics and hard-hitting, nasty riffs confirmed it, but there are also moments of uplifting clarity on Alice In Chains, such as the melancholic strums of Heaven Beside You and the airy jams of yearning closer Over Now.
The Rolling Stone article suggests that Staley was using heroin again at the time and he was reportedly missing from numerous album sessions, but his voice is often at its soaring, crooning best. “Our music’s about taking something ugly and making it beautiful,” Cantrell explained.
Looking back on the album in 2018, though, the guitarist and vocalist said Alice In Chains would always be connected to a painful period in their history for him. “There’s a sadness to that record - it’s the sound of a band falling apart,” he told Vice. “It’s a beautiful record, but it’s sad, too. It’s a little more exploratory, a little bit more meandering. It’s not as crafted as the rest of our records were.”
Whilst Cantrell said he had no idea it would the final record that quartet would make, he did have a sense that something was coming to an end. “You could feel that if something didn’t change we wouldn’t be lasting too much longer,” he recalled. “That’s just the honest truth of it. And it turned out to be right, unfortunately.
There would be one more moment of magic for this iteration of Alice In Chains, when they would perform an astounding set for MTV Unplugged in April 1996. That turned out to be Staley’s final performance, the frontman becoming a recluse and dying from an overdose in 2002. But he left behind some of the most gripping and emotional vocal performances of the 90s. In terms of studio albums, Alice In Chains was Staley’s swansong. It remains a brilliant, if harrowing, listen.
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