Alice in Chains
May. 15th, 2013 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevins_concertsA headbanging show! Alice in chains rocks! Unfortunately, they're a little... samey. Most of the songs tend to run together. They have that drone, which is pretty cool, but... they seldom go past that. They're like Boston, in that (IMO) all their songs sound great, but all their songs sound like all their other songs. Convenient, if you have at least one good song - you can't lose!
Doug won free tickets to see them at the Eagles Ballroom, and invited me along. It was a very cool birthday present. Doug was a huge fan, back in the day. Much bigger than I, and earlier, too, so he had bragging rights. I, on the other hand, had seen them back in 93, on their Dirt tour. :-D I listened to Jar of Flies tons of times, but Dirt not as much (I'd swear I used to own Facelift). And that's about it for my AIC familiarity. So at the show, there were a lot of songs I didn't recognize. That might have made it a little less fun.
Jerry introduced the band, at one point, which was cool, because I was totally drawing a blank on what their names were. After he said his own name, the audience started calling "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" :-) The band remarked several times how great the crowd was, and how it's always so great to play Milwaukee. You wonder, of course, how many cities they say that to, but near the end the show, the drummer came out to the mic, to go on at length about how great Milwaukee always is. I think they meant it!
When they came back out for their encore, Jerry said they had a special guest traveling with them on the tour - his dad, Jerry Cantrell. The elder Jerry came out to speak, and I couldn't understand a single word he said. As he walked back, the audience called "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" :-D Then Jerry (the one with the guitar) said, "you might know him better as The Rooster." *crowd goes wild* "The Rooster." Probably my favorite of the night. They followed that with "Man in the Box," (probably Doug's favorite song of theirs), and ended with "Would," (probably my favorite song of theirs). So that was definitely a stellar way to close the show.
I think they played just about all their hits.
Angry Chair
It Ain't Like That
Check My Brain
Again
Them Bones
Dam That River
Hollow
Your Decision
Grind
Acid Bubble
Down In A Hole
Nutshell
We Die Young
Stone
No Excuses
Phantom Limb
Rooster
Man in the Box
Would?
The sound was pretty good. I could understand most of the words, both sung and spoken. Being a metal show, I could hear it pretty well through the earplugs, which were made necessary by the distortion of previous night's BRMC show. They would have been a good idea anyway, given the distortion of AIC. Funny how there was a theme in three of the four bands in these two nights. Thundering drums and a distortion drone. Seriously.
We got to our place just as the opening act came on. I heard a guy say, with a grin, "a two-piece. Kickass." Bloodnstuff is a unique band. Not so much in that they were made of thundering drums and guitar drone, but that they were a two-piece metal act, and more importantly, the unique vocal style. I can't put words to it. Check it out. Unfortunately, aside from the vocals, they get very samey after not very long. The guitarist needs to work in something a little more interesting. I mean, the constant strumming lays a nice bed, and then he manages to pick out the top notes, which is cool - I like that sort of patterning - but it's only interesting for so long. But they have potential.
Here's an Alice In Chains video, in case you're wondering what they sound like... Them Bones
Doug won free tickets to see them at the Eagles Ballroom, and invited me along. It was a very cool birthday present. Doug was a huge fan, back in the day. Much bigger than I, and earlier, too, so he had bragging rights. I, on the other hand, had seen them back in 93, on their Dirt tour. :-D I listened to Jar of Flies tons of times, but Dirt not as much (I'd swear I used to own Facelift). And that's about it for my AIC familiarity. So at the show, there were a lot of songs I didn't recognize. That might have made it a little less fun.
Jerry introduced the band, at one point, which was cool, because I was totally drawing a blank on what their names were. After he said his own name, the audience started calling "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" :-) The band remarked several times how great the crowd was, and how it's always so great to play Milwaukee. You wonder, of course, how many cities they say that to, but near the end the show, the drummer came out to the mic, to go on at length about how great Milwaukee always is. I think they meant it!
When they came back out for their encore, Jerry said they had a special guest traveling with them on the tour - his dad, Jerry Cantrell. The elder Jerry came out to speak, and I couldn't understand a single word he said. As he walked back, the audience called "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" :-D Then Jerry (the one with the guitar) said, "you might know him better as The Rooster." *crowd goes wild* "The Rooster." Probably my favorite of the night. They followed that with "Man in the Box," (probably Doug's favorite song of theirs), and ended with "Would," (probably my favorite song of theirs). So that was definitely a stellar way to close the show.
I think they played just about all their hits.
Angry Chair
It Ain't Like That
Check My Brain
Again
Them Bones
Dam That River
Hollow
Your Decision
Grind
Acid Bubble
Down In A Hole
Nutshell
We Die Young
Stone
No Excuses
Phantom Limb
Rooster
Man in the Box
Would?
The sound was pretty good. I could understand most of the words, both sung and spoken. Being a metal show, I could hear it pretty well through the earplugs, which were made necessary by the distortion of previous night's BRMC show. They would have been a good idea anyway, given the distortion of AIC. Funny how there was a theme in three of the four bands in these two nights. Thundering drums and a distortion drone. Seriously.
We got to our place just as the opening act came on. I heard a guy say, with a grin, "a two-piece. Kickass." Bloodnstuff is a unique band. Not so much in that they were made of thundering drums and guitar drone, but that they were a two-piece metal act, and more importantly, the unique vocal style. I can't put words to it. Check it out. Unfortunately, aside from the vocals, they get very samey after not very long. The guitarist needs to work in something a little more interesting. I mean, the constant strumming lays a nice bed, and then he manages to pick out the top notes, which is cool - I like that sort of patterning - but it's only interesting for so long. But they have potential.
Here's an Alice In Chains video, in case you're wondering what they sound like... Them Bones
review from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Date: 2013-05-18 02:08 am (UTC)By Jon M. Gilbertson, Special to the Journal Sentinel
May 16, 2013
In the early 1990s, when music journalists with nothing better to do hastily gathered together various Seattle-area rock bands - Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. - under the term "grunge," Alice in Chains came closest to what little tangible definition the term had.
Wednesday night in the Eagles Ballroom at the Rave, Alice in Chains still defined it.
Playing to a capacity crowd, the quartet established its cred immediately with "Angry Chair." The tempo was the shambling walk of a zombie; the voices of William DuVall and Jerry Cantrell formed a monk-chant ominousness; and the guitars sounded as though they had been recorded onto a vinyl LP warped by moisture and heat.
That disorienting warp, also reminiscent of the playback of a cassette left out in the sun, was nearly constant throughout Alice in Chains' set list, whether the song was a relatively perky Black Sabbath grind like "Check My Brain" or a repeated series of crunchy riffs and sharp howls like "Them Bones."
The druggy, drowsy buzz of the music didn't take long to get overfamiliar, but that was less to do with Alice in Chains than with all the other bands (Staind is the most egregious example) that turned this band's approach into entire career during a long Alice in Chains absence both onstage and on record.
The presence of DuVall couldn't help but be a reminder of how the group had stalled in the mid-1990s, when original lead singer Layne Staley was rumored to be not so much battling heroin addiction as surrendering to it. (He died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine in 2002.)
However, DuVall not only avoided a mere imitation of Staley's compelling drone but also provided a cheerful and grateful presence to the fans.
Instrumentally, Alice in Chains had tremendous and basic strengths: Cantrell's guitar solos were lighthouses of clarity and melody amid the mud and fog; DuVall added extra texture as a rhythm guitarist; and bassist Mike Inez and drummer Sean Kinney roiled some rock action into the most plodding and monotonous of beats.
Even so, the best selections during the show were those that either barely moved or roused themselves into sudden fury, or both. "Rooster," for example, crawled through its verses and exploded into its choruses, while "Would?" simulated the rolling thunder of a battering ram approaching an enemy castle.
Such active moments didn't come quite often enough to make the overall performance consistently thrilling, but Alice in Chains remains a band that defines moodiness as power. In that, it was consistent.