4 keepers
keeper avg .333
Like the previous album Black Gives Way to Blue, the second post-Layne Staley album is mostly the Jerry Cantrell show, with the founding guitarist being the sole writer of more than half of the album. He pulls off a pretty good set of songs, though his bandmates are also credited on most of the album's best tracks. Will DuVall's only writing credit "Phantom Limb"**** is built around one badass riff, making it the most head-banging AIC song since Dirt, although to be honest 7-minutes is way too much. Excessive song length seemed to be a common professional criticism, with most of the album's songs being over 5-minutes, too long to make a habit of unless you're a Canadian prog-rock trio. But regardless of overabundance, the album's marvelous title song**** crawls croaking out the swamp like its evocative name, to later skewer the hypocrisy of religion that revels in hate and eschews science ("The devil put dinosaurs here, Jesus don't like a queer, No problem with faith just fear"). On the somber album-ending ballad "Choke"**** (similar to "Down In A Hole") Cantrell delivers another scathing chorus "Go then, if you don't feel right living in our home, Choking eat your pride alone." And "Pretty Done"**** (credited solely to Cantrell) shows the influence of the elastic, slippy guitar of My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields (or possibly AIC's previous hit "Check My Brain"). "Stone" heavily swings with a hell of a bass line, though Cantrell's processed, angular overdubs are off-putting here.
A band with such a distinctive signature sound is going to revisit the past somewhat: "Hollow" and "Lab Monkey" recall the sludgy tempo of "Rain When I Die"; "Hung On A Hook" resembles a pale imitation of "Down In A Hole"; "Voices" and "Scalpel" revert to the acoustic grunge of the EPs (the latter being a little too sunshiny). "Breath On A Window" and "Low Ceiling" represent the happier, poppier take on AIC's signature sound that "Check My Brain" and "Take Her Out" did on Black Gives Way to Blue. Though nearly every song would benefit from losing at least 20% of its length, Cantrell and founding drummer Sean Kinney play at the top of their game, and the album is at least as good as anything since Dirt.
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