Alice in Chains Returns, 14 Years Later, With a Ballsy 7-Minute NSFW Single

Most songs – even from my favorite musicians – go flat in my head when I over-listen to them.  At a certain point, I’ll hear the song and the riffs won’t rile me and the hooks won’t hook me, like a movie I’ve seen one too many times.  Or Facebook, after you’ve been on it for a year or five.

Alice in Chains is the rare band that – for me – has never worked that way.  When I listen to “Heaven Beside You” and “Dirt,” they still sound and feel as if singer Layne Staley were playing at his own funeral – which is exactly how they are meant to sound and feel.  (Oddly enough, the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” was the song actually performed at his funeral.)

Now, 14 years after the band’s last studio release and 7 years after Staley’s death, AIC returns with a new album, due out in September.  Click through for the (surprisingly NSFW) video of the first single, released yesterday…  

Says guitarist Jerry Cantrell:

“We have never worked this f*cking hard on a record,” guitarist Jerry Cantrell says. “It’s a hell of a challenge to try to add to a legacy. It takes a big set of f*cking balls — four sets of balls — to take on a challenge like this, and we did it for the same reasons we made music before. We care about it, we respect what we did, and we also respect the fact that we want to continue to make music with each other, so there’s a certain level that it has to live up to.”

The new record is called Black Gives Way to Blue and the single is “A Looking in View.”  The single is indeed ballsy – it’s 7 minutes long and the video has some right-the-heck-there frontal nudity, so I mean eat your heart out, David Banner.

Source: Rolling Stone.