Album Review : Alice in Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013)
Listen to The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
Alice in Chains were not supposed to be a band anymore after the passing of their charismatic frontman Layne Staley. The band’s identity revolved so much around his conflicted relationship to guitarist Jerry Cantrell and drug abuse, it was hard to imagine a life (let alone music) beyond that. But Alice in Chains roared back to life with Black Gives Way to Blue in 2009, an ambivalent album that explored the possibilities new frontman William DuVall could offer. The follow up The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here had high expectations to live up to and mostly fails at delivering.
The foundation of Alice in Chains’ revival on Black Gives Way to Blue was centered around two key elements: killer rock/doom guitar riffs and catchy, borderline pop-like choruses. The band fucking hits you upon the head with these in the terrific opener Hollow. The byzantine structure of the song and its sophisticated lyrics are completely new and lead you to believe Alice in Chains has transformed into a terrifying hybrid of High on Fire and Pink Floyd. Hollow is a terrific song (one they still play live) but it’s not representative of the rest of The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.
It slowly goes downhill from there, but never gets bad per se. The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here hits an uncomfortable and confusing in-between where the band systematically refuses to commit to a sound. I mean, it’s great to keep your horizons open but never at the cost of sounding like a middle-aged garage band. The fun, catchy choruses are almost all gone are replaced with overwrought, counterintuitive slogs on songs like Lab Monkey and the title track. Voices is another one of these let’s-give-the-Jar-of-Flies fans what they want, except that the chorus is once again terrible:
Everybody listen
Voices in my head
Everybody listen
Does yours say what mine says?
…and
Anytime I listen
Voices in my head
Everybody listen
Does yours say what mine says?
The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here positions itself as a heavy, sophisticated album from the opener (which again, is really good) so what is this cheapo teen angst writing? It’s neither cohesive nor musically interesting. Alice in Chains didn’t phone it in, but they’ve overthought everything on this album. The only two other songs I like on it are Pretty Done and Phantom Limb, which are the most straightforward rock n’ roll songs on the record. The chorus on the latter is pretty badass, climaxing with : I’ll haunt you like a phantom liiiiimb. It’s the emotions you want out of Alice in Chains.
Anger and melancholy.
It’s too bad, because there are interesting elements on almost every song. They just never amount to more than the sum of their parts. There’s a killer guitar bridge on Stone, but instead of ushering the song into a more intense part, it stays exactly the same. There’s a creepy, unique guitar drone in the title song but it never progresses or build into anything outside a pretty conventional heavy metal song. The vocal bridge on Breathe on a Window is one of my favorite moments on the album, but it’s like… the last thirty seconds of the song? The standout songwriting talent is definitely there.
The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is the first album in Alice in Chains’ discography I would outwardly call disappointing. Apparently, it took forever to write and studio clusterfucks are prone to lead to disappointing results. There’s a level of spontaneity required to write great rock music and it was most visibly derailed by health problems and overthinking. The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is not St. Anger bad or Death Magnetic level of overwrought. It just falls kind of flat. It lacks inspiration and a clear creative direction. Oh well, no long-tenured rock band bats .1000, right?
4.5/10
