All the Concerts Fit to Print

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.