Dirt - Alice in Chains [2x LP Limited Edition Yellow Vinyl]

Alice in Chains – Dirt [2× Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: 2× Vinyl LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo, Explicit
• Catalogue Number: 19439986771
• Barcode: 194399867716
• Genre: Grunge / Alternative Metal / Heavy Metal
• Label: Columbia / Sony Music
• Originally Released: 29 September 1992
• Reissue Released: 23 September 2022
• Vinyl Colour: Yellow Opaque
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Dirt is the second studio album by Alice in Chains — Layne Staley (lead vocals), Jerry Cantrell (guitar, vocals), Mike Starr (bass) and Sean Kinney (drums) — released on 29 September 1992 on Columbia Records, and one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums of the grunge era. Recorded at One On One Studios in Los Angeles and Eldorado Recording Studio in Burbank, California from April to July 1992, and mixed at Eldorado, with mastering completed at Future Disc in Hollywood, CA, the album was produced by Dave Jerden — who had also produced the band's debut Facelift in 1990. It entered the US Billboard 200 at number six, eventually being certified 5× Platinum by the RIAA and selling over 3.3 million copies in the United States alone, with significant chart success in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK. It is Alice in Chains' most commercially successful album and is consistently cited as one of the defining recordings of the early 1990s Pacific Northwest rock scene — named among the best metal albums of the 1990s by Loudwire, ranked highly in Guitar World and Rolling Stone best-of lists, and nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. It was the last Alice in Chains studio album recorded with all four original founding members, making it a document of the band at their creative and commercial peak before Staley's increasing isolation from the music industry.

The album is distinguished from the broader grunge movement of the period by the density and precision of its guitar arrangements — Cantrell and Staley's vocal harmonies, with their characteristic minor-third intervals, create a sound unlike anything else in contemporary rock — and by the unflinching directness of its lyrical content. Where much grunge drew on generalised adolescent alienation, Dirt addressed Staley's developing heroin addiction, alongside themes of depression, mortality, trauma and self-destruction, with a specificity and honesty that continues to resonate across subsequent generations of listeners. "Rooster" — written by Cantrell about his father, a Vietnam veteran who bore the nickname from his long hair before the Army shaved it — is among the most emotionally complex songs in the catalogue, its final verse describing the elder Cantrell's survival of combat with a directness that transforms the album's darkness into something approaching catharsis. "Them Bones" — Cantrell's meditation on mortality, its opening riff one of the most immediately identifiable in heavy music — opens the record with ferocious intent. "Would?" — the closing track, written as a tribute to Andrew Wood (lead singer of Mother Love Bone, who died of a heroin overdose in 1990) — returns to the album's central themes at its conclusion, Staley's delivery carrying a weight that would acquire additional resonance following his own death in 2002. The five singles drawn from the album — "Them Bones", "Would?", "Angry Chair", "Rooster" and "Down in a Hole" — all reached the top 30 of the US mainstream rock charts, each accompanied by a music video.

Side C closes with "Untitled" — a track that segues without break into the unlisted hidden track "Iron Gland" (originally titled "Iron Man" at recording, referencing the famous Black Sabbath track), featuring Tom Araya of Slayer on lead vocals, appearing courtesy of Def American Records. The track is not listed on any sleeve or label, and does not appear in the official tracklist — it is an Easter egg that has appeared on every CD and vinyl pressing of the album since 1992.

This 30th Anniversary edition on Columbia / Sony Music — notably the first ever release of the album on double vinyl (all previous vinyl pressings were single LP) — features remastered audio pressed on yellow opaque vinyl, manufactured by Sony Music Entertainment International Services GmbH in Gütersloh, Germany. The reissue was released on 23 September 2022, simultaneously with exclusive variants including a translucent orange artist web exclusive and an apple red Walmart exclusive. Includes a double-sided credits and lyrics insert. Single sleeve.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Them Bones
2. Dam That River
3. Rain When I Die

Side B

1. Down in a Hole
2. Sickman
3. Rooster

Side C

1. Junkhead
2. Dirt
3. God Smack
4. Untitled (followed by unlisted hidden track "Iron Gland" ft. Tom Araya)

Side D

1. Hate to Feel
2. Angry Chair
3. Would?

Credits

• Layne Staley – Lead Vocals
• Jerry Cantrell – Guitar, Vocals, Producer
• Mike Starr – Bass
• Sean Kinney – Drums, Producer
• Dave Jerden – Producer, Mixer
• Tom Araya – Vocals (Iron Gland, unlisted)
• Label – Columbia / Sony Music