Day 4: Alice in Chains - Dirt (2022 Remaster)

Album art courtesy of Columbia Records

I’ve become much more of a weenie when it comes to music as I’ve aged. You get older and start eating things like sauerkraut and wondering what it does to your nervous system to constantly be listening to songs with angry people screaming about murder. Because of this, I’m currently not that into the heavier stuff. Younger me would think that makes me a bit of a loser, but a glance at a list of people younger me dated would show that I had little to no concept of what a loser is, so that’s neither here nor there.

Somehow, I mistakenly had an image in my head that Alice in Chains was in the angry murder screaming category, so I never really gave them much of a chance. It turns out I was wrong. It’s more melodic grunge-y metal than Norwegian church burning music, which I’m definitely not against, but you know. I’m at an age where I think about my gut microbiome probably at least once a week – it’s too late to start liking that now.

I feel like I’ve been missing out. Dirt is an absolute stonker. It’s definitely dark, with songs exploring the worst possible parts of life, like death, depression, war, and heroin addiction. The lyrics are sometimes so difficult to hear that they stop you in your tracks, with “Dirt” being especially jarring. Songs like “God Smack” and “Sickman” are hard to listen to when thinking about singer Layne Staley’s later death from a heroin overdose, which he seems to have predicted in some of the lyrics.

But despite the darkness of the material, it’s not one of those albums that’s too harrowing to be properly enjoyed. It’s very, very good. Dirt is alchemising what was clearly a very ugly time for the members of the band into beautiful but pain-addled music, without it becoming one of those albums that are so dark that you only want to listen to it once.

This one is easily an 8.5/10 from me. Discovering that you like a band or artist who you didn’t think you’d like is one of the great joys in life, and my project is already leading me to music that will go into heavy rotation. I’ll be digging through their discography in hopes of finding something I like even more than Dirt.