A worthy return, although sadly a victim of the loudness war, making this possibly the loudest, most overly-compressed album released so-far. The result is one motherfucking heavy slab of gothic-grunge-metal. This is not easy listening. This is music which demands to be played fucking loud, or not at all. William DuVall fills Layne Staley's post impressively, and Cantrell's guitar-work and songcraft remain as charismatic as ever. While their recent tour proved that Alice In Chains is still a band well worth paying attention to, "Black Gives Way To Blue" is just too relentless (partly due to the horribly butchered mastering) to be anything more than an occasional listen.
There should be some kind of media device that automatically decompresses the sounds...
ReplyDeleteHave to agree, really. I like it a lot, but it's pretty much slipped out of my listening pile.
Oh, and I like the retro use of "grunge" as a tag!