“Layne Staley really was one of the most doom-laden, foreboding metal presences you could ever wish to see.“ Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield on the “pure molten lava“ of Alice In Chains' 1992 masterpiece Dirt

James Dean Bradfield, plus Dirt — (Image credit: Olly Curtis/Guitarist Magazine/Future via Getty Images | Columbia)

Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield once shared a personal theory underpinning his belief that there's been a dearth of truly classic metal albums since the early '90s.

“This is a bit of a shit muso point,“ he acknowledged while sharing his thoughts with The Quietus, “but I think a lot of that is down to modern day metal musicians tuning down. They do this drop, this detuning where everything is just ‘du-doom du-doom du-doom’... all the guitars are tuned too low.“

However, in the same interview, conducted in 2014 by writer Emily MacKay for the website's regular Baker's Dozen feature, the Welsh vocalist/guitarist singled out the “pure molten lava“ of Alice In Chains' darkest hour, their 1992 masterpiece Dirt, as his idea of a classic metal record, adding, “It’s up there with Sehnsucht by Rammstein“.

Bradfield said: “Alice In Chains were such a weird band: losing their singer, when he had gangrene and was addicted, and they went and did a record with fucking Elton John… just a truly bizarre band! Jerry Cantrell was the guitarist, and Layne Staley was the singer who sadly passed away.

“If you look at old footage of Layne Staley, he really was one of the most doom-laden, foreboding metal presences you could ever wish to see. Look at old footage of him and he’ll just stand there, stock still, with his glasses on and he always had his arms covered because there was always something bad going on with him, but his voice just came out of him like the eternal cracking of the oldest oak in the mythical forest. His voice was just wipeout, it was so low and had so much meaning.“

Bradfield also hailed Jerry Cantrell for his “classicist’s mind“ in regards to Alice In Chains' songwriting.

“The song Them Bones… it’s a simple rudimentary chord, but as soon as it comes on there’s a spectral, dying scream in the background, four chords going up in semitones, and it’s just like, Fuck me… how do people find this erudition out of simplicity? That’s when rock & roll is at its best, when it finds that complexity in simplicity, and power in loss or whatever you want to call it.“

Another British musician who has declared himself a fan of the album is singer/songwriter Seal. He shared his love of Alice In Chains last year during the 800th episode of Amoeba Records' long-running online series What's In My Bag?, a feature which gives musicians/actors/sports stars/celebrities an opportunity to rifle through the record racks in the chain's West Hollywood store, and select albums (or films) which are particularly meaningful and special to them.

"I love the artisty obviously," Seal said of Dirt, "but there's a real sexiness to their music: it's dark, it's beautiful, it's melancholic but it's really sexy. And it's it's weighty. They had something - of all those other bands from that grunge era - they had something truly unique: like they had a soul, almost like an R&B type soul, even though it didn't sound like R&B, [they had] that guttural soul as opposed to just kind of being in your head, hence headbanger. They had stuff that got you right down here [indicates pit of the stomach]. "I'm a big fan of of Alice in Chains and Layne's voice and his approach. God rest his soul."

Artists

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.