10 Greatest Closing Tracks In Metal

So... you've just gotten to the end of Alice in Chains' drug opus Dirt. After almost an hour of some of the heaviest hard rock that the '90s have had to offer, Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell have laid a lot of their demons bare, with half of the record being about Staley's prolonged addiction to heroin. Though Would? wasn't initially written about Staley, it ends up ringing true all the same.

Originally written for the soundtrack to the movie Singles, this cut was penned by Cantrell as a tribute to Mother Love Bone singer Andy Wood, who had died of an overdose just a few years prior to the album's release. As the band were looking for more material for their album, Would? became the definitive end statement for a project centered around the dangers of drug addiction. In relation to the more introspective content on here, this ends up sounding painfully real given Staley's eventual death from addiction, almost like he's posing the question to the listener as to whether they have the strength to forgive him for the hurt he has put upon himself.

Compared to the more lavish end statements in the rock pantheon, Would? doesn't really have different instruments flying off the handle and lets the raw emotion of the track speak for itself. The hard times for Alice were far from over, but this one artistic gasp gave us a peek into what the real problems were behind the scenes.