Alice In Chains returned to Glasgow last Friday, playing the O2 Academy for the second time since recruiting new lead singer William DuVall.
New album The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here might have only been released in May but any mention of it was notably absent – in fact, DuVall and co. didn’t say much at all. Largely low-key in how they were dressed – save for guitarist Jerry Cantrell wearing a kilt – and often silhouetted by the large LED screens situated behind them, the band had no intention of bantering with the audience or screwing around.
They came to play sludgy, fuzzy heavy metal – and for almost two hours that’s exactly what they did.
The crowd needed little encouraging drowning them out during the roaring chrous of opener ‘Rain When I Die’. When they weren’t being outdone by their own fans in the volume stakes Alice In Chains sounded as great as they did in the Layne Staley days. DuVall sounds spookily similar to the original frontman, perhaps a little less tense. Nevertheless, he was able to match Staley’s raw vocal power on ‘Them Bones’ and ‘Man In The Box’.
Perhaps owing to their raw, underproduced sound, there isn’t much that separates an Alice In Chains live performance of 2013 from the recordings of the Nineties. Cantrell’s guitar, occasionally assisted by DuVall on backing duties, is as alive as ever. On almost every song, he switched from harder, grungier chords to electrified solo micro-explosions off the cuff, as if it was no big deal. My ears say otherwise.
After an hour and a quarter of playing the band took their leave, returning for not one but two encores of both newer material and older material, including the almost obligatory ‘Would?’. They rounded off with the mellow, dream-like ‘Rooster’. Written by Cantrell about his father’s time serving in the army, the opening line, a drawn-out drawl of “Ain’t found a way to kill me yet”, seems apt for a band demonstrating remarkable staying power.
The setlist could have used some energising. Exciting and powerful at the start, the energy dipped a little towards the midpoint as the band opted for slower songs like the acoustically-flavoured ‘Nutshell‘ and the buzzing trudge of ‘Grind’.
Perhaps padding out the second half with some of the bigger songs of the first half might have done the trick. Make no mistake – the band haven’t lost it. They’ve still got their amazing fuzzy groove and DuVall’s vocal delivery do the songs a great service. Newer songs such as Hollow and Voices made the setlist, both from The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, but they slotted smoothly into place amongst older, more renowned tracks.
It just wasn’t quite balanced enough.
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