Depending on how you keep count, The Essential Alice in Chains is the third or fourth attempt at an Alice in Chains compilation -- 1999 saw the box set Music Bank and Nothing Safe, a single disc of highlights from the three-disc retrospective, and 2001 brought the release of the slightly too skimpy Greatest Hits. At two discs and 28 tracks, The Essential falls somewhere between the fan-oriented excess of Music Bank and the just-the-basics Greatest Hits, offering all of the group's b...   [ read more ]

CD $15.19

Dirt is Alice in Chains' major artistic statement and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece. It's a primal, sickening howl from the depths of Layne Staley's heroin addiction, and one of the most harrowing concept albums ever recorded. Not every song on Dirt is explicitly about heroin, but Jerry Cantrell's solo-written contributions (nearly half the album) effectively maintain the thematic coherence -- nearly every song is imbued with the morbidity, self-disgust, and/...   [ read more ]

CD $7.59

Written and recorded in about a week, Jar of Flies solidified Alice in Chains' somewhat bizarre pattern of alternating full-length hard rock albums with mostly acoustic, ballad-oriented EPs. That quirk aside, Jar of Flies is a low-key stunner, achingly gorgeous and harrowingly sorrowful all at once. In a way, it's a logical sequel to Dirt -- despite the veneer of calm, the songs' voices still blame only themselves. But where Dirt found catharsis in its unrelenting darkness and depravit...   [ read more ]

CD $7.59