Such a stacked guestlist paid off nicely for the band: by 1994 Sap had gone Gold, while Got Me Wrong achieved further acclaim as a single when it was featured on the soundtrack to the 1994 movie Clerks.
Right Turn features something of a grunge all-star line-up, with Mudhoney's Mark Arm and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell each singing a voice (even being credited as "Alice Mudgarden"). Opener Brother marked the first time Jerry Cantrell took over on lead vocals, and Heart's Ann Wilson contributes to the vocal harmonies of Am I Inside and Brother. Short and sweet at a little under 21 minutes, Sap is Alice In Chains showing off their most sublime melodic inclinations, oceans of melancholy and wistfulness translated into a soulful catharsis. Nonetheless, the Sap EP foreshadowed the direction many 90s rockers would take (not least Nirvana, and later AIC themselves, with MTV Unplugged), showing a softer, more reflective underbelly after the sludge-meets-arena-rock of Facelift. 9), Rainier Fog represents an Alice In Chains that have embraced their scars and are ready to share the lessons learned.Īlice In Chains' decision to put out a (mostly) acoustic EP in 1992 was hardly controversy on the level of Metallica including acoustics on Fade To Black or Dylan goes electric, but it was still a fairly bold move for the band that had not long come off touring with Slayer and Megadeth. 12 on the Billboard 200, faring marginally better in the UK where it achieved a top 10 placing at no. While not as commercially successful as its predecessors (peaking at no. From lead single The One You Know to the driving rhythm of the title track, Cantrell flexes his muscles without taking away from the overall package. While a level of weighty sludge is always to be expected from Alice In Chains, Rainier Fog brings back Cantrell's appetite for enormodome guitars that soar over the muck to remind the world that there is more to AIC than low-end dirges.
If The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here was the band dipping their toes into the past, Rainier Fog sees them fully reckoning with that past while maintaining the perspective that inherently comes with the passage of time. Recording in Seattle for the first time since 1995, Alice In Chains' Rainier Fog is as much a meditation on their unlikely status as rock'n'roll survivors as it is the band embracing the fullness of their sound. Their first release, 2009's Black Gives Way To Blue was the kind of triumphant comeback rock legends are made of and the band's subsequent activity – tours, albums, celebrations – has ensured their legacy has not just remained in tact, but actively grown in the decade-plus since their return. Layne Staley's tragic death in 2002 crushed any hopes that the band's original incarnation would ever come back, but sporadic reunion shows from 2005 to 2008 ultimately gave way to a new incarnation of Alice In Chains with new vocalist William DuVall. Slipping just a little glam flair into their sound helped AIC become one of the first major grunge success stories – their 1990 debut Facelift was the first of any 90s Seattle band to go Gold in the US – and the band enjoyed enormous commercial appeal across the decade. For while their sludgy riffs and dour demeanour were worlds away from the glamour of the Sunset Strip, Alice In Chains never particularly hid their love for metal and could often be found on bills alongside everyone from Slayer and Megadeth (where they opened the legendary Clash Of The Titans bill) to Ozzy Osbourne. Again, it's a case of an Unplugged album that is designed to attract the band's core audience, which makes it a fairly entertaining effort that is essentially just an official bootleg.Nonetheless, Staley's time in Alice N' Chainz brought to him to the attention of Jerry Cantrell and in time the pair would team up for an entirely different kind of band. The acoustic arrangements of the harder songs sound like novelties, and the rest sound like rehashes of their previous work, only without much energy.
#No excuses alice in chains unplugged professional#
During the concert, Alice in Chains drew from their three albums and two EPs, offering new, more reflective arrangements for harder songs like "Would?" and virtually re-creating the original versions of "Got Me Wrong" and "No Excuses." Throughout the album, the group sounds tight and professional - on the basis of this performance, it's hard to believe that they hadn't played together for nearly three years - but it doesn't offer anything that the albums don't already. There's a variety of reasons for their inactivity - primarily it's due to the health of certain members - but the lack of concerts made the Unplugged performance seem special. Between the end of 1993 and a performance for MTV Unplugged in the spring of 1996, Alice in Chains performed no concerts - they didn't even support the release of their eponymous third album with a minor tour.
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