AVIDIGI

Black Gives Way to Blue is the fourth studio album by the American rock band Alice in Chains, which was released in Australia on September 25, 2009 and in the United States four days later. The first Alice in Chains album in nearly fourteen years, Black Gives Way to Blue is their first release with new vocalist William DuVall, who replaced the late Layne Staley. Black Gives Way to Blue marks the first Alice in Chains album released on Virgin Records, their first venture away from Columbia, who handled all of their previous releases.

The span of nearly fourteen years between the self-titled album and Black Gives Way to Blue marks the longest gap between studio albums in Alice in Chains' career. The band had been working on new material since early 2006, shortly before hiring DuVall as their new singer. By April 2007, Alice in Chains had been writing and demoing songs for the album, but the band did not show further signs of progress until October 2008, when they announced that they had begun recording with producer Nick Raskulinecz (of Foo Fighters, Stone Sour and Rush fame) in the studio. The writing and recording process was completed on March 18, 2009, guitarist Jerry Cantrell's 43rd birthday.


AllMusic.com Review: It's hard not to feel for Alice in Chains — all the guys in the band were lifers, all except lead singer Layne Staley, who never managed to exorcise his demons, succumbing to drug addiction in 2002. Alice in Chains stopped being a going concern long before that, all due to Staley's addictions, and it took guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney a long time to decide to regroup, finally hiring William DuVall as Staley's replacement and delivering Black Gives Way to Blue a full 14 years after the band's last album. To everybody's credit, Black Gives Way to Blue sounds like it could have been delivered a year after Alice in Chains: it's unconcerned with fashion; it's true to their dark, churning gloom rock; and if you're not paying attention too closely, it's easy to mistake DuVall for his predecessor. There's a difference between desperately attempting to recapture past glories and reconnecting with their roots, and Alice in Chains fall into the latter category. While they'll never be mistaken for a feel-good band, there is a palpable sense of relief that they get to play together again as a band, and what's remarkable is that they still sound like themselves, capturing that weird murk halfway between '80s metal and '90s northwestern sludge, reminding us that we were missing something in their absence.