Alice in Chains Gets Born Again on "Black Gives Way to Blue"

"Check My Brain" Tops the Billboard Rock Songs Chart as Alice in Chains Album Hits the Stores

I remember the first time ever I heard an Alice In Chains album. I had heard "Man In The Box" a few times and loved the lyrics and the crunch of Jerry Cantrell's guitar. The video was pretty cool. But my roommate had bought the "Facelift" album and I worked nightshift. He was an exercise nut with a weight-bench and very lucky that Alice In Chains had a unique and engaging sound, because if they had sounded like, say, the Jonas Brothers, he may have become a man without a boom box. But they were phenomenal and I just laid in bed with only two hours sleep as my room vibrated to the slamming grunge of Seattle's Alice In Chains -- and listened to every song.

I was hooked.

I bought all their albums -- and EPs -- as soon as they were released and was never disappointed. But the albums stopped after 1995's eponymous release. In 2002 it looked like they would never release a new album, as Layne Staley's body finally succumbed to the heroine he kept supplying it, a victim to the depression of his girlfriend's death.

Alice In Chains' first single from "Black Gives Way To Blue," "Check My Brain," was the #1 Billboard Rock Songs single for the fourth week in a row in the U. S. when their first album in 14 years dropped on September 29. The first song from the album, "A Looking In View," dubbed the buzz track, debuted on the radio in June to pave the way for new Alice In Chains and, when "Check My Brain" hit the airwaves with its mind-bending guitar, an effect obtained by holding down the whammy bar (we're told), Alice In Chains fans and anyone looking to hear something completely different were ready for it.

Most of the new music I hear these days comes via the radio in one of my vehicles. It is where I heard both the new songs for the first time. And although I was anticipating something good from Jerry Cantrell and company, I did not expect the sound to come off so close to their old sound, but it was amazingly similar -- but fresh and new. New lead singer William DuVall blended his voice with Cantrell's and the sound was amazingly similar to that produced by that of Jerry Cantrell and former frontman Layne Staley, Alice In Chain's late lead singer.