1001 Albums Summary

This album was given to me today, and as someone who's listened to this album a bajillion times, I have a lot on my mind as to what I want to say about it. Or at least a little bit. This album is easily, in my opinion, grunge-from-that-year perfection. Everything from the sludgy, down-tuned, grime-filled riffs to Layne's harrowing, powerful vocals (ranging from the varying tremolo in "Godsmack" to a very straightforward, dark vocal style in "Angry Chair", for instance), brings so much emotion and generally also bring so much intrigue, even on a lyrical front. Take one of the most popular songs from this album, "Rooster", as an example. "Rooster", from what I remember, is about guitarist Jerry Cantrell's father, who was in... I think the Vietnam War. Lyrically, this song is helpless, talking about how "every path leads me to nowhere" and how the war has made him unable to "make it through", in a sense. But overall, yeah. It deserves to be here. It's not my favorite Alice in Chains project, per se (I've always loved "Jar of Flies" more, despite the fact that this album's also flawless in my eyes), but it's the one I definitely recommend the most if you'd like to look into grunge from this period in time and the like.