Alice in Chains – Dirt (1992)

When grunge conquered the world in the early 90s, I was still just a young boy just becoming interested in pop and rock music. Most of the popular music around that time had quite heavy guitars and metal, at least in Finland, had become mainstream. This had an influence on my first music choices and I spent my time listening to Metallica and Guns n' Roses, but also Nirvana. Back then, Nirvana was really the grunge movement for me. I mean, I did know about Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots as well, but they never interested me as much. A few years ago, however, I started intentionally listening to these grunge bands again and I found myself understanding all of these other bands a lot more than as a kid. I ended up buying many of those classic grunge CDs I had known back then but had never truly embraced, including this one.



Alice in Chains is one of the heaviest sounding grunge bands of that era. This is most likely the reason why I was never much of a fan back as a kid. I did like metal music, but I always liked the more melodic and less heavy sounds. I remember hearing them on MTV and thinking that this was a bit too noisy for my taste. About 15 years later I was dating someone who really liked metal music and I also found Dirt by Alice in Chains in her record collection. I wasn't much into most music she listened to, so Alice in Chains was a good compromise of something we both enjoyed. I really started liking songs like Rooster and Down in a Hole and those same songs made me buy this album a couple of years ago when I had a grunge phase.

The album starts off really heavy and aggressive in the song Them Bones. This song is all about big metal riffs and angst of the generation-X. The riffs continue in Dam That River, but the tempo is a bit faster making this song sound more like Metallica, which I had enjoyed all of those years in my youth. Rain When I Die starts with metallic sounding bass lines and noisy guitar weeps. The chorus sounds really like the whole 90s sounded like in my memories. Down in a Hole was a big hit and as the only ballad on this album, it is my favourite song on the album. I remember liking this song even back in the day when I saw it on MTV. The vocals are quite fantastic in this one. Sickman brings back the heavy guitars and 80s style hard rock sounds. There are some slightly psychedelic sequences in the song as well conducted with strange echoes. Rooster is the other massive hit that I remember from my youth. That song too is a bit lighter than the rest of the album, which is probably again why I really like it. This song really reminds me of Pearl Jam. The title-track Dirt has some oriental style melodies that were really popular in the early 90s. Most of the later album is filled with songs I'm not too keen on. They have very heavy riffs and not much of melody. The exception is the last track on the album, Would? This song has some excellent angsty melodies and melancholic undertones. It's a good song to end the album with.

Early 90s is forever in my memories through music videos. We had MTV at home and I spent much of my time watching it, taping my favourite videos on a VHS. The music video for Down in a Hole is a very typical music video of that time. The band is hanging out in a desert and the video has been shot with strange filtered colours and distorted angles. The band members look really typical of the 90s. All the bands that I listened to had long hair at that time, which meant that I too wanted to have a  long hair, which wasn't a good idea with such a thin hair. Fortunately I understood to get rid of it quite quickly.

I'm probably always going to be more into Nirvana and Pearl Jam when it comes to grunge than Alice in Chains or Soundgarden because the two latter bands are not as melodic as the first two. Nevertheless, Dirt is a classic album that defines much of what early 90s was all about and I personally start reminiscing my childhood while I listen to it, which means it's important that I have this album.

Listen to the album on Spotify.