“It’s been a long road to get here, man. There’s a lot of miles to go,” Alice in Chains singer/guitarist Jerry Cantrell said as he sat on stage during an intimate, acoustic set the band performed at a listening party on Tuesday evening.
Cantrell, accompanied by new singer/guitarist William DuVall, bass player Mike Inez and drummer Sean Kinney, performed a three-song acoustic including “Your Decision,” Black Gives Way To Blue” and “Down in a Hole,” from its 1992 breakthrough “Dirt” at the Montalban Theatre from their first studio album in 14 years, due in stores on Sept. 29.
Cantrell described “Black Gives Way To Blue,” the title track to the new album, as a “deep” tribute to DuVall’s predecessor, Layne Staley, who lost his lengthy battle with drugs in 2002.
Beforehand, guests were treated to an open bar and In & Out Burgers and were later seated whole they heard the entire album on the PA system after checking in their cell phones at the door to prevent piracy. The new video, “A Looking in View,” also played in a loop.
During the 1990s when Seattle was at the epicenter of the “grunge rock” phase, Alice in Chains spearheaded the gloomy genre with a string of dark, druggy albums. Four of them hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200, including the chart-toppers “Jar of Flies” (1994) and its self-titled studio swan song the following year.
“Black Gives Way To Blue” marks the band’s first release for Virgin/EMI; all its previous albums were handled by Columbia Records. Virgin will also host a listening party in New York next Tuesday.
Leave a Reply