Dirt (1992)
Dirt is a 1992 alternative metal album by Alice in Chains.
Slow, heavy, and sick with its own subject. Alice in Chains built their second album out of depression, anger, and drug addiction, and they never once make any of it sound like fun.
Columbia released Dirt on September 29, 1992. Jerry Cantrell wrote most of the songs, and the record sits where grunge and alternative metal meet: heavier and slower than the grunge tag usually implies, with riffs that bear down instead of speeding up. Layne Staley wrote two songs on his own for the first time and played guitar on them, and he sings the album from inside the damage rather than at a safe distance from it. The short track "Iron Gland" hands the microphone to Tom Araya of Slayer.
The words take in pain, anger, anti-social behavior, wrecked relationships, war, and death alongside the addiction, and they stay unsparing about all of it. Nothing here is dressed up as glamour or offered as an excuse.
This was the last album the four original members finished together. The band fired bassist Mike Starr in January 1993, partway through the tour supporting it, so Dirt stands as the full original lineup's final statement. Expect a record as bleak as its title.
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A few thoughts on Dirt
Addiction runs through this record, so the honest follow-ups are the ones that carry the same weight. Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis on his own dependency, written without cleaning it up for the reader. Heavier than Heaven follows Kurt Cobain, a contemporary whose band wore the same grunge tag, and it refuses to sand down the ugly parts. For the wider history of that moment rather than one life, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana covers the scene around it.
On screen, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster watches a heavy band pull itself apart in rehearsal rooms and therapy sessions, the closest film equivalent to hearing four people document their worst year. Classic Albums is the slower option: one landmark record taken apart track by track.