Chronicling Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains has released quite a few “best of” collections but for those fans who really want to dig into the catalogue of this band “Music Bank” is the best way to go. Some might call this 4 CD set a bit overboard for a mere “best of”, but this is more of large anthology of sorts. It covers all the era with each disc, and contains the radio hits along with b-sides and demos that will have fans frothing at the mouth.

Disc 1 covers much of Alice in Chains earliest and more formative years. While I cannot place exact years of Alice in Chains’ history, but 1987-1991 seems to be fitting. Disc 1 starts off with the unreleased “Get Born Again”, and it only gets better from there! 8 of the first 10 tracks on this disc are either unreleased or, at best, very rare and hard to find. Disc 1 also contains about 90% of what can be found on Facelift, and a few cuts off of Sap. This is by far the most interesting disc, mainly because it contains Alice in Chains sounding almost like a heavier Guns’ n’ Roses and not the doomy, depressive, and despair driven band that many people came to know on Dirt.

Disc 2 covers the Dirt era, along with a few cuts from Jar of Flies. In fact, disc two is pretty much a straight haul through Dirt, and while Dirt is a damn good album, on this box set, were the 2 other discs have at least a half dozen demos, this one, with only 1 demo song, just doesn’t live up. So while Disc 2 is enjoyable, it won’t have any fan drooling over the unreleased material. Heck, even the demo song is of “Junkhead” which can be found on Dirt.

Disc 3 covers their 1995 self titled album, along with a few selections from Unplugged. This disc, as with the first disc, is very interesting as it includes some unreleased and remixed versions of songs, namely the almost techno sounding “Again”. However, while disc 1 shows the band coming into their prime, which is exciting to listen too, this disc shows the band on the decline, and is interesting in a morose way.

The final disc is a cd-rom, which is, at best, an abatable little add on. The box set was release before dvds had really taken over, and this is where they included a few videos and multimedia items, but if you have the initiative to get this, you may as well get the dvd, “Music Bank – The Videos”, which came out in 2001, and includes the videos to the fan favorite songs. So, as you can see, disc 4 is a nice little add on, but not really important and doesn’t add too much to this box set.

Overall, “Music Bank” is absolutely essential for fans of Alice in Chains, and will have fans drooling all over the place. And as for people just trying to get into Alice in Chains, this may seem a little massive to get for a band you aren’t really into yet, but this will give you more accessibility to this enigmatic band than any of the other “best of” sets may give you.

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR METAL-ARCHIVES (www.Metal-Archives.com)