Review by Saxy S for Alice in Chains - Facelift (1990)

A Much Needed Foundation Before The True Reconstruction

When you live in the moment, it can be impossible to tell what trends are going to kick off and who will be left holding the bag. In the year before BOTH Nirvana made Seattle a hotbed for rock, and Metallica made heavy metal cool,  Alice In Chains were laying foundations for both of them. The bands debut album Facelift lays the groundwork for a grunge album with crunchy guitars, but the usage of slower doom grooves, and the vocal stylings of Layne Stayley that can sound familiar to anyone who has listened to Glenn Danzig might give you a different impression.

Right out of the gate, "We Die Young" and "Man in the Box" give off this dichotomy of sounds that are not too dissimilar from one another, but still sound very interesting side by side. One is crunchy and heavy, the other is more melodic and comforting. While later songs, most notably "I Can't Remember" has an introductory riff that sounds like it could have been borrowed out of a Slayer intro circa South of Heaven. And it's all delivered with a cleanliness that is right for mainstream consumption. The dual vocal melodies of Stayley and Jerry Cantrell are splendid and harken back to Bruce Dickinson and the classic Iron Maiden run, albeit much darker and ominous. The guitar and bass riffs are precise and do not steal the thunder from the vocals unless they are called upon, and while the percussion is a little lacking, notably that snare drum that has been thrown through a reverb grinder, the simplicity makes the limited snare usage slightly more bearable.

However the one thing keeping this record down is the lack of direction. You would think with all of these influences that Alice In Chains wears with pride that this band may find a way to be a little bit more experimental. As it is, Facelift is a very safe record as quite a few riffs sound like they are being recycled throughout the record and not in a progressive way. The record sounds good and Alice In Chains have a sound that is all their own here, but they do not have the understanding at this point that each unique song needs variety. As a result, the final third of the album becomes quite tedious and kind of boring to be honest.

All things considered, I never liked Facelift initially. In comparison to what followed, this album felt very pedestrian by AiC's standards, but over time I realized how significant this album was. An album that had so many ideas, but could not execute them properly, seems to be the only reason I can ascertain that Facelift was not THE grunge album of the 90s, and Nevermind was. Same goes for Metallica and their S/T. But those bands owe a lot of their success to Facelift; preparing the landscape for both of their monumental 1991 albums. I wonder if Alice In Chains will do some reconstruction of their own before the next album...