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An album review by Calev Ben Zion

“There’s no going back to the place we started from” (“All Secrets Known”). The inevitability of time stopped perplexing long ago. Now we focus on the toll. “Tears that filled my bong…Years expended gone” (“Check My Brain”). Where once we spent time, we look back in judgment, call it wasting time. Where we once might have been confused, we now recognize ambivalence when we see it. And where we once might have been full of righteousness and confidence, we acknowledge the collusion of foolishness. Everything that happens is change. Nothing remains the same.

When Layne Staley self-destructed into an ignominious and unsurprising death, the remaining members of Alice in Chains and their fans were finally, completely devastated. Jerry Cantrell put out a notable solo effort dedicated to the former lead singer, but with the advent of Staind, Godsmack, and others, as well as the general demise of “grunge” as a musical moment, there seemed no way back for AIC from the black-hole pull of the loss. Yeah, right.

Cantrell kept a fire burning, jamming with the likes of GnR vet Duff McKagan and Tool’s Maynard James Keenan. Hooked up with William DuVall a couple of times, along with AIC bass player Mike Inez and drummer Sean Kinney, playing AIC songs in reportedly hard hitting, breathless sets.

The rumor mill kept grinding.

Alas, Babylon, Black Gives Way to Blue is the document of how a parasite hooks into a host with a steel-wound grip of groove. It takes giant molten balls to take over the vocals for a band with a sound so similar to the deceased progenitor of the band’s historical resonance. DuVall makes the front space his own with a combination of respect and audacity. “Check My Brian” recalls the classic grind and grunge with pop metal chops and maintains a fresh, now sound. DuVall’s voice fits clean within the range of each tune’s build and fall. “When the Sun Rose Again” is signature AIC acoustic haunt, a tune not out of place alongside songs on Jar of Flies. The metal blues stomp of “Acid Bubble” melts into curling, grasping tendrils, while, with an O. Henry kind of surprise in the end, the melancholy title song anchoring the collection features Elton John on the piano.

The guitars are crisp and the rhythms are precise and not showy. DuVall and Cantrell are two wings of raven black melodies. I read somewhere a mediocre review complaining that the return of AIC lacked only the death drama Staley brought. That’s backward thinking. There is no wild abandoning of roots on this collection. Alice in Chains is reborn, reincarnated as a new beast of burden. As much as the output resembles the past, the charge is onward, heavy on the blues, driven by a cold metal heart aflame at its core. Born in fire, the newfangled AIC gives us a contemporary gem of a roots rockin album for a new age.