Unfortunately, the curse of the emblematic grunge singers has marked permanently the music world as the demise and ultimate death of Cobain, Staley, Weiland, Cornell left a huge void. If you count Andrew Wood’s untimely passing then you can easily understand why Eddie Vedder must feel as the…last man standing!
The truth is that the problems for Alice in Chains started long before Staley’s death. The band’s last studio album back then had been released in 1995…not a fruitful period, by all means. Alice was on a hiatus and its members focused on side projects. Naturally, there is absolutely no need to write anything about the impact of those early offerings by Cantrell and Co. These are well documented throughout the years.
Personally, I didn’t expect such an impressive comeback by Alice in Chains. For starters I didn’t expect that Cantrell would kickstart the engines of the Alice in Chains vehicle or to put it more accurately I didn’t expect to do it in such a qualitative and mind-blowing manner. I am quite certain that even the most loyal Alice in Chains fan didn’t expect three hits in a row with “Black Gives Way To Blue”, “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here” and “Rainier Fog”. And all these with a new singer (William DuVall) who never tried to imitate Staley and blended wonderfully with Alice in Chains and especially with Cantrell’s vocal harmonies.
Yes, those three albums do not bear the groundbreaking characteristics of the 90s albums of the band but you must realize that they have recruited new fans with those new records thus they manage to keep the flame alive. I may be an old-school fan of Alice in Chains but at the same time I am still not deaf so I can easily hear the magnitude and quality of Alice in Chains in such tracks as “Check My Brain”, “Your Decision”, “Stone”, “Hollow”, “The One You Know”, “So Far Under.
The most important thing is that Alice in Chains are alive and well in 2019. They’ve gone through hell but they have returned defiant and triumphant! The band will play in Athens on the 24th of June. This will be their first visit ever in Greece. We will be there to pay our respects to those rock n’ roll survivors.
Sakis Nikas
