Alice In Chains Albums Ranked From Worst To Best
3. Black Gives Way To Blue
There was pretty much no way Alice could have gone the distance after the death of Layne Staley. From the agonizing screams he delivered on every album to some of the writing that he did behind the scenes, their classic material wouldn't be half of what it is if Layne hadn't laid out his pain on vinyl. Once we rolled into the new millennium though, these titans ended up undergoing a full-blown resurrection.
After a few tribute shows to celebrate their earlier material, Jerry Cantrell became intrigued with singer William DuVall from the band Comes With the Fall, whose unique style gelled with his perfectly. Going out on tour as the next iteration of Alice in Chains, the accompanying album Black Gives Way to Blue was an absolute triumph, with songs that sound like relics from the early days.
That's not say that it doesn't offer anything new though, with songs like Last of My Kind showing DuVall getting dirty on the vocals and mustering up some screams that many may have thought were impossible after Staley had departed from this Earth. As such, you get an album that is both nostalgic and contemporary at the same time, almost as if you're being greeted by an old relative from beyond the grave. Whereas other reunions feel like petty cash grabs, this is the textbook example of how to return from the dead properly. Layne would have definitely been proud.