10 Underrated Albums By Legendary Rock Music Bands

Any Alice in Chains fan probably knew that anything that was going to come out after Dirt was going to be a bit of a rough listen. Throughout their masterpiece, Layne Staley mentioned time and time again about how strung out he was on heroin, and Jar of Flies was where we started to get the picture of just how far he had started to sink. Just because the band members are strung out though doesn’t always mean that the end result is bad.

For a band at half capacity, the self-titled dog record is a lot more cohesive, sounding like a more sludgy version of what Alice was used to doing. Granted, a lot of that can be attributed to Jerry Cantrell, who practically carries most of this album by himself, coming up with all of the riffs and making for an album that feels closer to a Black Sabbath record than anything else. They also seem to at least know the strengths of the past few records as well, with Heaven Beside You and Over Now taking the same brooding acoustic stuff of their EPs and amplifying it just a little bit more. Although Jerry does have his time to shine for a majority of this album, the moments where he and Layne harmonize still have a certain magic to them, with songs like Grind being one of the few shimmering lights on the project because of how well they play off each other.

There is definitely some filler to be sure (even the band admits it on Nothin Song), but that doesn’t mean that the whole thing is unsalvageable either. It might be hard seeing this as the beginning of the end nowadays after Layne’s passing, but the majority of this record still feels like the heavier answer to what Dirt had already done.