Alice In Chains Skips Reality Shows, Youtube & Auditions and Hires A Friend to Sing

[Brian Damage]

You can stage a reality show (INXS), hire a cover-band singer (Judas Priest) or make your drummer the star (Genesis).

You can hold auditions, like Aerosmith just announced they're going to do.

Or, without much pomp and circumstance, you can just bring on a longtime friend and start again.

Seattle grunge kings Alice in Chains chose the inconspicuous route to filling the hole left when lead singer Layne Staley died in 2002 from a drug overdose. They waited seven years and brought in friend and recent collaborator William DuVall of the band Comes with the Fall.

The gentle, tactful approach seems to be working. The band's new album, "Black Gives Way to Blue," feels respectful of Staley, while allowing DuVall to begin to take the reins. And it's selling well, debuting at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. The current tour boasts 22 sold-out dates. (Hoping to catch them Thursday or next Friday at the Paramount? Start searching on Craigslist.)

Musically, the album picks up right from where their final, self-titled release left off 14 years ago.

It's a collection of dark, metal-fueled rockers, with guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell's sludgy chords throbbing throughout. DuVall has the moan and wail down pat, blasting through a fist-pumper like "Last of My Kind." But he really doesn't end up front and center often, instead sharing the spotlight with Cantrell.

The album's second single, "Check Your Brain," is pure '90s throwback with its rev-up-and-down riff — and it's irresistibly catchy. Rightly so, it earned them a Grammy nomination for "Best Hard Rock Performance."

And funny enough, it's a love/hate song about leaving the gloom of the Northwest for sunny California, where they recorded the new album.

The sunshine doesn't seem to have affected the band's sound much, though. They're still as heavy as they were when they were at the center of the Seattle grunge scene (which is having a comeback in its own right this past year: Pearl Jam's new album, the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's "Bleach," and a semi-Soundgarden reunion — minus Chris Cornell — last March).

Die-hard AIC fans are decidedly split on the new album. Some are happy to have them back, no matter what. Some think no one can ever replace Staley. But the truth might be more in the middle: the album is good, but not groundbreaking. It's a sort of playing-field-leveler for things to come.

As Cantrell sings on the album's opening track, "All Secrets Known": "There's no going back to the place we started from."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm..._chains29.html