Alice In Chains
Dirt

THE REVIEW

If suffering had a voice, it would not be much different from Staley's, and if it had a soul, Alice's could perfectly personify it. "Dirt" is Staley's testament of his battle against addiction, where he bares all his feelings and fears. Cantrell's guitar, Starr's bass, and Kinney's drums accompany Layne through his physical and psychological ordeal, on a path that can only be interrupted by death.

It's a moment: as soon as the music starts, the singer's scream with that unique timbre begins, then another, and another; "I believe them bones are me", and from the beginning, you already look to the end, to dust and bones.
"Dam That River" and "Rain When I Die," the former brutal and visceral, the latter more psychedelic, continue the path opened before, maintaining a dark and morbid atmosphere. Layne's dark despair resurfaces in the subsequent "Sickman," a macabre and sick dance at intervals, with a perverse sound that pierces. The fifth track, whose title is hardly worth mentioning, is a memory of the nightmare of the Vietnam War, which involved Cantrell's father; the voice starts relentless and intense, as touching as ever, and then explodes into its outburst and gives way to a hard, sparse, and direct riff, almost as if wanting to restore that scenario of bodies massacred and buried in the forest mud. "Junkhead," as the name suggests, contains the reason for Alice In Chains' music, a song for drugs and against drugs, constructed with a hallucinatory rhythm. The title track, however, is perhaps the piece that most unsettles the listener, it is the central moment, when Staley slowly paints the fresco of his despair, thanks to heart-wrenching lyrics: "You, you are so special, you have the talent to make me feel like dirt, and you, you use your talent to dig me under, and cover me with dirt." Clearly, he is still referring to drugs.

Suffering without escape seems to have become a routine by now, with "God Smack" and "Hate To Feel" playing, which indeed make no exception, also regarding the beauty and depth of the tracks. The band's metallic tendencies are reflected again on the path of "Angry Chair," with claustrophobic melodies and broken rhythms. The more acoustic and "soft" side of Alice In Chains finds its best expression in the beautiful ballad "Down In A Hole," where the denied desire to break free from chemical dependency returns. Finally, "Would?" concludes this masterpiece in an epic and dramatic manner, with a breathtaking finale.

In April 2002, Layne Staley died from the very substance that kept him alive, and all we are left with is his memory, his music, and his words:
"I'd Like To Fly, But My Wings Have Been So Denied"