Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Alice in Chains - Dirt (1992)

I have to confess to liking Dirt a lot less nowadays than I did some thirty years ago when I first heard it.  Back then it was a mainstay of my listening rotation as I was genuinely enamoured with the riffs of Jerry Cantrell and his bluesy lead work.  The vibrant and electric sounds of the first two tracks on Dirt do still resonate with me to this day as a perfect start to an album as they typified the fact that not all grunge had to be gloomy and melancholic.  There was an immediacy back then to the opening of this record that was not often repeatable on most other releases of the time.  This spontaneous and perfectly tight sounding start is actually only rivalled upon reflection by the end of the record when the tumultuous Angry Chair, followed by the initially sultry and brooding Would? (that develops into a pounding album closer over its three-and-a-half-minute run time) close out the release brilliantly.

The problem I have with Dirt is what comes between these tracks as I now find the album to have lost a lot of the overall positivity that I held for it back in the day.  Arguably the more grungey aspects of the album are the ones that I now dislike the most as with the exception of Down In A Hole and Rooster I no longer enjoy the rest of Dirt.  Rain When I Die now sounds as whiny as the title suggests it should, only not in a cool reflective way like it used to and I just cannot stand Sickman anymore with its chaotic and too frantic structure.  It is not rare for me to find an AIC album that is frontloaded (although rarer in fact to find any album that is front and rear-loaded to such a small extent) as Facelift takes a huge dip south after the opening two tracks, so there is a consistency to their early output for me.  This is not to say that they are not still hugely important to the alternative metal movement - parking grunge references to one side for a moment - as AIC were really good at incorporating other influences into their vaguely metal-like foundations in order to offer something which was the core essence of alternative music.

I just do not feel that Dirt has aged that well for me, even acknowledging the nostalgia around the release and the importance of it.  I will openly acknowledge that they have never topped this release in either era of the band but the longevity of it is questionable nowadays even though there is still enough here to keep this a four star rating.