Dirt, by Alice in Chains, turned 32 years old this September 29th, and today it is widely recognized as a masterpiece and a staple of the grunge era in the 90’s.
Released on September 29, 1992, the album arrived a year after Nirvana’s Nevermind, which remains the landmark release of the 90s grunge scene. It was well-received and extremely popular.
The core four bands of grunge were Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains, each of which provided listeners with different slices of the Seattle music scene, and their outstanding frontmen made each one different and unique.
Alice in Chains was the heaviest band of those four, intertwining heavy metal riffs with the raw emotion of lead singer Layne Staley’s singing power. Jerry Cantrell played guitar, wrote most of the music, wrote lyrics alongside Staley, and sang backup/harmonizing vocals. Mike Starr was the bassist, and Sean Kinney was the drummer.
Dirt was the last album that these four members recorded together because Starr would be fired due to addiction issues less than six months later. It was the second record that the band had produced. Facelift was the debut album in 1990, which has sold around three million copies worldwide, but Dirt surpassed it with five million copies sold, making it the bands most successful recording.
This album was the pinnacle of the band’s career, produced during a time when substance abuse was running rampant in the music world — Dirt speaks to the heaviness of that. Staley dealt with heroin addiction before, during, and after the making of the record, so a majority of the songs on it lyrically allude to his internal struggles with the dangerous drug.
The vocal duo of Staley and Cantrell is entrancing. Staley’s voice was a freight train of power and willing to hit every note with perfection, while Cantrell’s softer harmonic additions interweave in many songs that they wrote throughout their time together as bandmates.
“We work in a really interesting way, especially lyrically and melodically,” Cantrell said of the kinship in an interview. “The way that Layne and I worked together, we had a pretty good partnership. We didn’t really talk about things too much, but we just filled the other half of what the other guy didn’t have.”
Magic is the best word to describe the works of Staley and Cantrell on Dirt. The great grunge duo created a timeless album that speaks to the listener on a personal level. So much of grunge music was the raw intensity and realistic messages it brought to the table after a period of the ‘80s, which entailed glam rock bands and hair bands. Alice in Chains helped to define the cultural shift of the early ‘90s.
Dirt is a masterpiece not only because of its worldwide success but also because of its ability to reach out to others dealing with problems and give them strength in knowing that they’re not alone. It also holds up as a tremendous listening experience.
