Alice In Chains guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell has explained how he ended up appearing on the soundtrack to horror blockbuster Sinners.
The 59-year-old, who co-founded Alice In Chains in 1987, lends his voice to the track In Moonlight, which was released on April 18 as part of an official collection of songs from and inspired by the vampire film.
Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, Cantrell reveals that he was put in contact with Sinners composer Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer, Black Panther, etc.) by Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Ulrich is credited as a performer on the song Bury That Guitar from the film’s score.
“I got this call from Lars, who’d done drums with Ludwig Göransson as part of it,” Cantrell tells us. “He explained that Ludwig and the director Ryan Coogler wanted to talk to me about taking a piece of the score and writing a song out of it. So he put it together and we pounded out In Moonlight, which was great, man, and the movie is so well-made.”
One of Sinners’ key themes is the appropriation of Black music and culture via colonialism. In an interview with The Breakfast Club earlier this year, writer/director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther) revealed that the grunge genre, pioneered by Alice In Chains and other Seattle rock bands, was a major influence on the film.
“I started listening to it, bro, and I was like, ‘This shit is like what my uncle used to play’: the blues,” he said. “I’m listening to it, I’m listening to the guitar riffs and what they’re talking about and the passion they’re singing with, and I’m like, ‘That’s odd.’ I dug into the research, man, and that’s exactly what it is: it’s just blues music sung by white people.”
Sinners was made on a production budget of $90 million and is currently nearing a $300 million global box office take. Over the weekend, it reached the $200 million domestic box office mark, becoming the first original film to earn that much in North America since Pixar’s Coco in 2017.
The film has also been met with critical acclaim, boasting a 97 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes at time of publication.
Cantrell released his new solo album, I Want Blood, in October. He’ll start a solo tour of Europe on May 31 and will stop at Download festival in the UK on June 15, followed by a headlining London show on June 17. See the full list of dates via the guitarist’s website.
Alice In Chains recently had to cancel a North American tour due to drummer Sean Kinney suffering a “non-life-threatening medical emergency”. The scrapped run included headline performances and a slot at the Sonic Temple festival in Columbus, Ohio.
The band are booked to appear at Black Sabbath’s farewell show at Villa Park, Birmingham, on July 5.
