10 Best Rock And Roll Breakup Albums

Most of the heavyhitters of the grunge community were not really having the best time post 1994. After Kurt Cobain's suicide sent shockwaves through the entire town of Seattle, bands started to distance themselves from the sound that made them famous, either by going down different directions like Pearl Jam or breaking up in the case of Soundgarden. Alice in Chains may have kept on trucking, but they happened to have a walking nightmare singing for them.

Despite the years trying to recover and even finding himself on steady ground with Mad Season, Layne Staley's return to the band meant another relapse on heroin, which became much more pronounced as the sessions went on. In making a handful of these songs, Jerry Cantrell was doing most of the heavy lifting, going for songs that are a lot sludgier and even singing a handful of these tunes completely by himself because Layne wasn't physically able to.

It also wasn't a good sign when there wasn't as much touring going on for the project either, which made fans question just how bad a shape Layne was in. Though a hiatus seemed to be the right move to get everyone on track, it was too late for Layne to clean himself up, getting more dependent on his vices until he was found dead in his apartment. The MTV Unplugged appearance may have been one of the final releases from the old Alice, but this record really marks the beginning of the end for one of the greatest voices of the '90s.