10 Perfect Metal Albums With No Bad Songs

One of the main draws of what gets rock fans into metal is just how heavy it can be. If you were to show a metal song to someone who had never even heard the genre before, you'd probably go for songs that had more of a bite to them, whether that means double bass pedals or crunchy guitars that hit you in the face. That's not what metal is all about though. Metal always comes back to darkness, and Alice in Chains tapped into something pitch black on Jar of Flies.

While the album Dirt is a much better indicator of Alice's aggression, what they do with just acoustics on this record is a lot more painful to listen to, as Layne Staley starts to really succumb to his addictions. After spending the last album trying to cleanse himself of the more toxic sides of his personality, songs like I Stay Away and Don't Follow almost serve a cautionary tales, letting you know what you're getting yourself into if you go that one notch too far when using.

There might be a lot of pain on this record, but there's still a lot of pretty moments to be found as well, from the beautiful vocal harmonies between Layne and Jerry Cantrell to the instrumental Whale and Wasp where the guitar practically sounds like it's crying out in pain. Alice in Chains would go on to make one more record with Layne behind the mic, but in terms of that artistic being that we knew from all the way back on Facelift, this was his real final goodbye.