Alice In Chains- Dirt (1992)
By Josh Kruk

The 1990s saw the birth of grunge music, a term that would start out by defining a generation only to turn into a label that many people would attempt to avoid.  In the midst of Pearl Jam and Nirvana was Alice In Chains, a band whose influence can be felt but never pinpointed or replicated.  What is often forgotten about Alice In Chains is for as much as people liked to call them grunge, they were very much a metal band, and a dark one at that.  Alice In Chains toured with Lollapalooza, but they also toured with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne.  Regardless of genre or label, you will be hard pressed to find a band whose music was as deeply emotional, personal and powerful as Alice In Chains.  The voice of Layne Staley was, is and always will be every bit as haunting as it is poetic, and the guitar/vocal work of Jerry Cantrell was the perfect accompaniment.  While Cantrell wrote and sang good amount of AIC’s lyrics, it was the latent pain in Layne Staley’s voice helped provide one of the best vocal dualities in the history of music.  Cantrell was very much the driving force of Alice In Chains as Layne Staley constantly struggled with heroin addiction.  1992 saw the release of the definitive Alice In Chains album Dirt.  The album itself is an entrance into a dreary, painful world that only exists in the nether regions of the human mind.  There are not many albums on the market that can draw the listener in like Dirt for not many bands are able to sell their emotions fully like Alice In Chains. 

The first song on Dirt is “Them Bones” and within the first 10 seconds of the album, you can already start to feel the anguish.  A scream by Staley and a full on musical assault by the rest of the band makes it clear that Alice In Chains is not for the faint of heart.  Track 3, entitled “Rain When I Die” brings us some of Staley’s best vocal work; his harmonies that close out the song give us an insight into his struggle.  That struggle only goes on as track 4 is an Alice In Chains staple in the form of “Down In A Hole.”  The slow, brooding tone of the song would give even the most optimistic of people a feeling of utter hopelessness.  The next song on the album, “Sickman”, will send chills up the listener’s spine.  At 2:42 into this affecting rhythm, you actually feel you’re in a horrible descent into madness that one can only pray they never experience.  Track 6 is another AIC classic known as “Rooster.”  A song written exclusively by Jerry Cantrell about his father’s experiences in Vietnam, this song exhibits a passion that many bands today cannot even touch.  One of the most bone chilling moments in AIC’s musical catalog comes when the song first gets heavy and Staley belts out “YOU KNOW HE AIN”T GONNA DIE!” at his full vocal capacity.  If anyone listens to this and isn’t affected in some way than they should be questioning where their musical tastes truly lie.  Track’s 7 and 8 are as clear a picture you will ever get into Layne Staley’s ultimately unsuccessful battle with heroin addiction.  Track 7 is entitled “Junkhead” and spares the listener any subtlety about the nature of drug addiction.  Track 8 is the title track off of Dirt and serves almost as an epilogue to the sordid tale that is laid out in the previous song.  If earlier parts of the album didn’t make you feel bleak or empty enough, “Dirt” will definitely finish the job.

The final three songs on this album are as solid as a closing you will find to any album.  The lyrics for “Hate To Feel” and “Angry Chair” were both exclusively written by Layne Staley and it clearly shows.  Musically, the entire band shines on “Hate To Feel”.  Sean Kinney’s drums and Mike Starr’s bass work back up Jerry Cantrell’s hypnotic guitar rhythms while Layne’s voice completes a dreary package that has the power to change your psyche.  “Angry Chair” is almost an eerie foreshadowing into the life of Layne Staley for it contains the lyrics “Saw my reflection and cried…so little hope that I died.”  Unfortunately for music, these words would eventually prove to be true.  The final song off Dirt is “Would?” another famous AIC cut.  The song is short and far from sweet, it need not be any longer than 3:30 for it’s famous opening bass line sets a tone of misery that the rest of the band builds upon for the rest of the song. 

The end of “Would?” not only signifies the end of Dirt but it can almost be seen as a representation of Alice In Chains as a whole.  The song/album end with the line “If I could would you?” as the band tears into their instruments as a final curtain call to this symphony of despair.  There’s no outro, no fading out, no hidden tracks; the album ends as harshly as it started.  This is how Alice In Chains approached their music; no frills, no bells and whistles, just an honest, passionate work ethic that seems to be lacking in music today.  While the early 90s are gone and Nirvana will always be seen as THE 90s band, Alice In Chains has quietly shown to be equally as influential.  The influence can be heard in artists like Shinedown, Puddle Of Mudd and Godsmack (this particular band even went so far as to “borrow” their name from an AIC song).  These bands attempt to capture the spirit of Alice In Chains and more specifically the voice of Layne Staley, but it is the opinion of many that they really aren’t pulling it off.  Alice In Chains was a once in a lifetime band that put every part of themselves into their music.  The physical being of Alice In Chains will never return, but they have left their soul in the music world forever. 

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Tom Waits - Closing Time (1973)
By Gary Schwind

Every once in a while, an old album or an album that has been in my collection for a long time makes it into my heavy rotation. Closing Time, released in 1973 (the year before I was born) fits that bill right now. Tom Waits is a brilliant songwriter who will never be out of style with me. 

So why Closing Time?  The simplest answer is that it is just a timeless album whose beauty lies in its simplicity.  A few songs feature Tom's vocals and a piano and nothing else. Nobody would ever accuse this album of being over-produced, as you can say about many albums released in the last decade, and that is something I love about this album.

The album begins with "Ol '55," which features Waits' raspy voice in a sort of brooding piano bar song. Keep in mind, this was 31 years ago, so his voice was considerably less raspy than it is now. If you don't have any Tom Waits in your collection, this would be a good place to start because it's a lot more melodic than some of his more recent albums. 

He follows up with "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You," a song about a chance meeting in a bar and the wordless interactions between two people. It is because the song is so spare (just vocals and acoustic guitar) that it is so powerful. At the end of the song, Waits declares, "I think that I just fell in love with you." The song really captures that feeling of seeing someone, feeling drawn to them, but not acting and then being left with your regrets about what you might have let slip away. This is one of many great story songs on the album.

There is not a bad song on Closing Time. It is mellow piano bar music with jazz and blues influences. Tom Waits' vocals kind of reach deep inside you and make you feel something. The lyrics are spectacular, thought-provoking and real. There's nothing phony about this album. Perhaps the best way to sum up this album is to borrow a phrase from another friend of mine. He actually introduced me to Tom Waits. Before that, I was wandering blindly through the wilderness, unaware that Tom Waits even existed. This friend said, simply, "Tom Waits is good for the soul." Indeed. Tom Waits is good for the soul. And if your soul is crying out for a great singer-songwriter, then Tom Waits is your guy and Closing Time is your album. If you know someone that owns this album, ask them to borrow it. Your soul will thank you.

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Godflesh – Streetcleaner (1989)
By DeadSun

“This is my own Hell.”

The city of Birmingham (UK) is, with little room for argument, an incubating ground which has hatched some of the most important and influential bands ever to grace a stage. The city, along with its neighboring districts, was the breeding ground for everyone from Black Sabbath, the Moody Blues, seminal reggae band Steel Pulse, Duran Duran, Judas Priest, and Led Zeppelin, to songwriters such as Jeff Lynne and Phil Lynott.

For grindcore fans, Birmingham is home to “Napalm Death”--- the band who is sited by most as the “patriarch” of that particular style.  Apart from its celebrated status as the grand patriarch of grindcore, Napalm Death is also well known for two other things--- that of having recorded the shortest song on the planet (“You Suffer”, which clocks in at a chunky 1.316 seconds), and that of going through line-up changes at a similar rate of speed. Ex-Napalm members have gone on to form the likes of Carcass, Final, Cathedral, Scorn--- and Godflesh.

Formed in 1988, by ex-Napalm Death guitarist Justin Broadrick and bassist G.C. Green, Godflesh is--- in light of the stiff competition--- arguably one of the most underrated bands to emerge from the city of Birmingham.

Streetcleaner (1989), the band’s first full-length release, is a masterpiece of both bone-crushingly low, dissonant growl, and jarringly precise industrial savagery. From its opening line, “you breed… like RATS”, to its final utterance, “furnace… furnace”, Streetcleaner turns over the polished stone of modern existence, and assaults the senses with what crawls out from underneath. While both primitive and simplistic in the technical path it seeks, Streetcleaner scores off the charts in terms of innovation, originality of style, and its almost supernatural ability to convey the desired mood. 

The music captured on the album runs to the extremities and, in 1989, was a stylistic blend that was simply without precedent--- the high frequencies are shrill, airy, and distantly tortured, while the low end affects the rage of a subterranean convulsion. Streetcleaner is a conceptual, forward-thinking marriage between flesh and steel. Within its iron gates, the listener finds machine-fused percussion that assumes the relentless sounds of factory presses and the snap of pistons, hammering away beneath the ebb and flow of a gruesomely slack-tuned harmony of molten lead. 

With Streetcleaner, we find a band carving out a sound without comparison--- a sound that Godflesh became singularly known for. We find music that was not only influential to acts such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, but reaches across the great Genre Divide, finding favor among the fans of death metal, grindcore, black metal, thrash, doom metal, hardcore--- and (in some cases) even the likes of acid, techno, trance, and house. This could only be evidence of a band which truly had its own vision and its own sound--- and the case, pursuant to the evidence laid out, is a closed matter. 

 For the serious collector of extreme metal and/or diverse brands of electronica, Godflesh is a critical ingredient for a well-rounded library, and Streetcleaner  was the release which crystallized the prototype of Godflesh’s nightmarish vision of flesh and steel. 

Learn about this incredible band. Hear the music in a format that does it justice. They are easily one of Birmingham’s best kept and most influential secrets.

Until next month… this is DS, signing off.

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