ALICE IN CHAINS — Facelift (review)

ALICE IN CHAINS — Facelift album cover Album · 1990 · Alternative Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Silver Shade of Lead
This is AIC's first LP and for better or worse, it shows. Altough the production values hadn't yet reached the same level of its follow-ups, the band makes up for it with some of their hardest songs. In fact, the album kicks off with We Die Young, and follows through on a mind-crushing first half with Man In The Box, Sea of Sorrow and Bleed The Freak. Crunching guitar chords, powerful vocal deliverances and an electrifying hint of fretboard pyromania are telling us we're in for a tour de force metal album.

After this they seem to lose some focus and the stoner side of AIC (if there's any other) kicks in and are more than worthy of reference: Love, Hate, Love, a dark and disturbing epic piece of sorts, whose bone-chilling ambience is driven through Cantrell's moody, layered guitars and Layne's madness piercing through the mic; It Aint't Like That, another potential hit in the dawning grunge scene; Sunshine and Real Thing bringing us to the much overlooked funny bone in AIC, where the band's depicted mental illness takes a turn to the hilarious.

To sum it up, if you ask anyone about metal in the 90's you'll more than probably come across Facelift. For some, it is a sort of forgotten counterpart to Dirt, however, after a couple of spins it's more than capable of holding its own. 4 well deserved stars.
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