He usually did them very quickly, with minimal retakes, in total privacy. Staley would go into the booth by himself and cut vocals. Those who have read David de Sola’s book “Alice in Chains: The Untold Story” will know that Layne Staley didn’t like anyone watching him lay down the vocals. I credit Lars with turning me on to that room.”

“That went into the room sound, and it made the drums sound like artillery going off. I rented a PA system and put the kick drum, toms and snare through this woofer plus these huge side monitors,” Jerden told Music Radar. Lars told me that they had this 31-inch woofer for the kick drum. “We recorded it at One On One, where Metallica did their “Black” album. In an interview with Music Radar, Jerden credits Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich for helping him find the right drum sound at One On One Studio in LA that helped Sean Kinney sound like a monster on Dirt. You can really hear the thickness in songs like “Them Bones” and “Rooster”. Jerden and engineer Bryan Carlstrom built a customized splitter box that split the guitar into the three amps and cut down on the hissing and buzzing created from such a process. Then those tracks were double and triple tracked to fatten up the sound. Turns out Cantrell actually recorded each riff through high, mid and low frequency amps to get three different tones. Produced by Dave Jerden, who also worked with AIC on their debut Facelift album, Dirt has a doomy, heavy sound that announced the band as one of the heavy hitters in rock at the time.Īnd central to that amazing sound is how guitarist and principal music writer Jerry Cantrell got those super thick and heavy guitar tones. Billboard chart, no small feat for band that got little airplay and a record with drug addiction, depression and anger as central themes.īut, aside from the lyrics and amazing songs, what makes Dirt such a great record is how good it sounds. Released in September, 1992, Dirt took the Seattle band to №6 on the U.S. Among the truly great heavy metal albums, Alice in Chains’ masterpiece Dirt is easily a cut above the rest.

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