Todd489 wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Alice In Chains - specifically Dirt and self-titled, totally in love with the slowed down and psychological edges, grime, and Lane Staley probably had one of the best voices I've heard for what he did.
Please look into a band called Gonga. If you're into early AiC you'll like 'em. I think they have some stuff on YouTube and their album is floating around on bittorrent somewhere.
I just had the chance to take a listen, I give you props for trying but no - doesn't have the same appeal whatsoever, I'd say I'd recommend that to Nirvana and Foo-Fighters or Silver Chair fans. I think the closest band I've know who's come to actually capturing that same angles and energy that I saw in AIC was Drain STH (or at least their first cd) but even with them its less coherent and of course them trying to legitimately be their own band rather than a chick AIC knock-off.
I almost think the feel of AIC in dirt or anything later had to really come from Lane's girlfriends death and him feeling himself rot away on the heroin. Its a very specific hellish kind of pain in the tunes that I like, stuff that if your listening to it in the right mood and actually feeling it your getting tears in your eyes and mad chills. I think the way I described what I liked about em back when I had dirt in 6th grade was that it was different from most metal in that it had that real grimy, sesspool sort of edge to it but but I felt that whole give you chills sort of burnt and seared beauty derived from pain. I don't know if I'd use the 'cesspool' terminology to describe them anymore and maybe its just because I'm so used to seeking that angle in music that I've gotten that used to it. That slowed down feel of inner-city decay is definitely there (which BTW, Ministry had that as well and loved them for that and their sort of 80's anti-drug commercial sort of dysphoria) but also a lot of other very heavy emotions that go off on other angles. I've lost that specific sort of imagery just because I don't attach it to tangible objects like I used to as a kid when my mind was thinking more concretely, an emotion is an emotion and a mental state is a mental state. I think with AIC if I were to name which songs I think I feel the most off of the cd's I mentioned they'd have to be Down In A Hole, Sludge Factory, Headcreeps, Junkhead, Dirt, Hate To Feel (and that little skit is the perfect intro to that because they make it sound like this epic battle but in a really desolate way and it almost gets directed like its just symbolism of someone's internal psychosis and battling their own inner shadows). Rooster I would put in there, that octave guitar riff in the middle always gets me but its just too overplayed. Rain when I die's got a really sick twist to the melodic scale in the vocal bridge (can't quite sum that one up but again its a level of emotionality that's grimed beyond what most people can put out or register).
Still, if you know of any bands that are really immersive, intense, and have a feel as grimy but as lucid as AIC, Tool, or Sublime - notice none of those bands sound anything alike but there's a certain methodology they have in common just in terms of very well-matched and delivered intensity of ideas, the music itself, everything. Hate to be a music snob but its just how I'm wired. I kinda do notice though, the crowd of people who seem to actually like the same edges of music I do - hard core drug dealers, drug addicts, in-and-out-of-jail, not trying to sound like I'm anything but its just funny and kinda odd that it takes people of that intensity and that level of 'been through it' to usually say "Holy s--- these guys are ill" a the same times and on the same stuff as I would (then again I think that partly explains the perceptual gap I have with most people on music - its just not the same place of mind).