[QUOTE="Brmarlin"][QUOTE="bebopoutlaw3gun"][QUOTE="killer_is_me"]Alice In Chains will release their new album.Tiefster
Guns N Roses will release Chinese Democracy?
In other music related predictions, the Dead Kennedys will sue each other again, and Glenn Danzig will fight Jerry Only in a cage match.
Alice in Chains is in the studio again actually...or will be later on this year.How good is it gonna be? I mean, back in the 90s, some of their songs were pretty ridiculous. I can appreciate it more in retrospect, since a lot of it was probably REALLY the thoughts of a very troubled man. And that allows me to appreciate it more as a portrait of the Layne Staley rather than as genuinely good music. But otherwise, I'm honestly a little bit old for all of that gloomy stuff. Maybe it's not even that, but lyrics such as "I want to feel dirty...the stinging pistol...in my mouth, on my tongue" are really sort of infantile. That kind of stuff reeks of "I'm mad because I just reached puberty and haven't gotten laid yet, so I want to die." Of course, I give Alice In Chains "street cred" because Layne Staley actually DID have some serious ****ing problems. But a lot of this gloom and doom stuff tends to look very juvenile if not done well.
In fact, I love me some grunge, but I feel like I'm way too old to be listening to a lot of it. You know, a lot of stuff like a lot of Alice In Chains songs and Nirvana songs sort of come off as being "dark because dark is cool". Now that's not to say that I avoid dark music. But when you make songs about how your life sucks and you want to die, it comes off as being childish if you don't do it well. Like, I recall being in high school and there was this certain clique that seemed to take pride in publicly seeming as screwed up as possible. You know the kinds of people I talk about. The kinds of people who flaunt the fact that they're addicted to drugs, and try to act crazy/depressed/suicidal for whatever reason. I once remember seeing some dude wearing a t-shirt saying something about the voices in his head, and I thought "WTF? Is there a market for that stuff? Why would anyone want to advertise that?"
That's sort of what some of that music reminds me of. "Dark for the sake of dark" is the new "Flames on Optimus Prime". And it's part of the reason why, as much as I loved some of those old 90s bands, in a way I'm sort of glad that a lot of them are gone. As much as I like Nirvana, that **** got sort of old. Meanwhile, Foo Fighters ****ing rock, and are fun to listen to. Smashing Pumpkins were awesome, but once you get up there in years, lyrics such as "living makes me sick, so sick I wish I'd die" and "despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage" just seem sort of...well, pathetic.
For example, I remember the first time I heard a Linkin Park song. And the first words I heard were "crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal". And I heard that **** and literally started laughing my ass off. Thing is, at least lyrically, that's not really any different than a lot of the beloved music that I grew up with. So yeah...like, I love the hell out of The Smashing Pumpkins' old stuff. But listen to that stuff when you're 10 years older, and it's different because you're different. Some of it's almost embarassing to listen to nowadays. That's why I liked Zwan. Just like Foo Fighters, Zwan just plain rocked. It was light easy-listening music, no question, and could do with more lyrical and thematic complexity. But at least it's after that whole "life sucks" period that in many ways was stupid and utterly horrible. I'm too old for that ****. I think that's part of why Pearl Jam is one of the only one of those ****ing huge 90s grunge bands still going strong, because they were NEVER about that.
Having said that, what's going on with Alice in Chains? How important was Layne Staley to the band, and what direction is the band taking? Are they going to try to continue and/or replicate the angst of their older works, or are they going to try to go into a more mature direction now that everyone (the band as well as fans) is older and hopefully a little bit wiser and more mature?
Log in to comment