Wall of Mouths

Check My Brain (studio full song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaN4bSdiYvQ

Fucking Ace.

AIC old skool.

Y’know, hate to say it, but if i didn’t no any better i’d say it sounds like Layne…

Fucking great tune.

I love the angry sounding guitars. The chrous seems to be lacking a bit of energy or something though, so the whole song just seems to wander on till it finishes without much happening. Still, with those guitars seething all the way through I have to admit I liked it :-)

well, the song is great. cantrell is a good writer, so it doesn’t surprise me.
duvall seems ok. but in this song it’s seems that it’s actually jerry’s voice that is louder in the mix, which isn’t unusual for them too (f.e. “heaven beside you”)
the harmony-vocals of layne and jerry were always a trademark

I don’t know what’s going on, why I always have to say bad things about new albums by bands I used to like. I’m not just doing it to take the piss, I promise. Still, this new AIC album… oh, well. It’s not awful, it’s not the catastrophe it could have been without layne. Still, it’s an unbalanced affair. Jerry is clearly the creative leader, but now he’s also become the main singer. Which is why “Black Gives Way To Blue” sounds more like his last album “Degradation Trip” than AIC. It’s hard to make out Duvall at all, and when you hear him - like you do in “A Looking In View” and “Check My Brain” - he sounds restrained. Respectful yes, but maybe too respectful. He doesn’t leave much of an impression.

There’s not one really memorable riff on the album, either. “A Looking In View” is as riff-heavy as it gets. Most songs aren’t heavy to begin with. “Black Gives Way To Blue” is a mid-tempo affair for the most part. With the old-fashioned (outdated?) production the album sounds like a mixture of early 90’s Metallica and Guns N’ Roses with AIC-vocals on top of that.

Another thing that I find a bit problematic is that now we have people in their 40s still complaining about living in their “Private Hell”. I don’t know. Sure, you can be unhappy at any stage in your life, but it’s just not very grown up to write about it in the same way. Besides, this is the band that promised us “We Die Young”. It’s like The Who still singing “I hope I die before I get old”, if you catch my drift.

I think it is a very decent album and was like a trip down memory lane for me (you just don’t get many bands doing this type of music anymore).

For the most part it is like Layne never left (I am not as privvy as to who sang which vocal, but sounds like the old stuff to me) - No disrespect to the man of course, he was a legend.

Saw them live with this line up a few years ago at Download Dublin and have to say that it was great - Layne’s addiction prevented me from seeing them live with him unfortunately.

I am not sure what all the naysayers were really expecting from this album - thrash metal? AIC has always been a fairly mid tempo band as far as I am concerned.

Anyways, just what I think - am happy to have them back playing new music, kicks the arse off alot of other things out there right now.

And are all the lead vocals on the album not the new singer then?

I did have the first Cantrell solo album but I haven’t listened to it for years and can’t remember what his vocals are like.

KJC Dublin wrote:

…like a trip down memory lane…

Don’t you mean memory layne? ;-)

The album comes out today here. Looking forward based on the split opinions.

I was thinking that as I read it… :)

@vagabond:

i know that jerry has always been the main songwriting force, but what bothers me is that now he’s also the main vocalist with his voice always being louder in the mix or him being the main and only singer on many tracks.

>> not one memorable riff? damn, i heard three songs and at least “check my brain” has a killer intro/verse-riff … those bended notes, to me, are very very memorable. you just don’t hear that kind of stuff often these days. so there’s one at least.<<

fair enough. to me that particular “riff” is not memorable at all. not in 2009.

>> a mid-tempo affair. again, nothing new. AIC have always been a mid tempo affair. those grinding riffs just work best that way …<<

i didn’t mean that I expected thrash metal or anything, but most of the new songs aren’t heavy, they don’t rock. yeah, i know that aic used to do a lot of slow, acoustic songs in the past, but these new ones don’t have the emotional impact of “nutshell” or “brother” or “rotten apple”. “your decision”, “when the sun rose again” and “black gives way to blue” are just, well, boring. “private hell” is good, but at least 2 minutes too long.

>> production sounds good to me. want to hear AIC with retro-production or timbaland-production like on cornell’s new stuff? well i don’t … it sounds fat (but not overcompressed) and that’s how it’s supposed to be for that kind of music<<

obviously, there’s not only two ways of producing an album. i much prefer “dirt“‘s production over BGWTB’s. it’s meaner, drier. the new album could have been produced by bob rock. there’s a lot reverb on the guitars and the vocals. this is what mainstream rock music sounded like in 1990.

>> lyrics … they don’t need to be autobiographical, even if they’re written that way. as an artist you can take inspiration from anywhere and transcribe it into your way of thinking and then write about it.<<

okay. then why do they choose the exact same topics they’ve written about when they were still in their 20s? it was believable then, now it’s just… childish. i’m not saying they aren’t allowed to express whatever emotion they want, but would you want the arctic monkeys to sing about girls looking good on the dancefloor in 2029? now, please, don’t start a discussion on the arctic monkeys. it was just an example. the topics or the way they are approached should change as an artist gets older, IMO.

>>and besides, the who did sing my generation, at least up until 2003. it’s on the royal albert hall - dvd … ;)<<

yeah, i know. i listed them as a bad example for bands overstaying their welcome, breaking promises. by that I don’t mean that the who or alice in chains were supposed to have died young, BUT they can’t go on singing stuff like that when they’ve turned into old farts. it’s devoid of any meaning.

>>if your main points in criticism are those, then i wonder why you bothered to buy the album at all or why you even liked the band in the first place. because mid-tempo riffs, dark lyrics, fat sound and a lot of singing from jerry has always existed in the AIC-world<<

i loved alice in chains, that doesn’t mean i’m going to praise any carbon copy of their previous work.

I only just got my “official” copy, and was most surprised to find out that Elton “eyebrow twitcher” John appears on a track