Alice In Chains guitar legend Jerry Cantrell returns with a thunderous solo album that you can file alongside his best work.
Not having anything left to prove doesn’t mean you have to fall silent. Jerry Cantrell doesn’t have to do solo records – the thing is, he can’t not do them. Music, and the struggle between light and dark within that music, fires up his grunge-powered strings and eerily emotive voice year after year. A pause in Alice In Chains duties has allowed him to follow up 2021’s solo album Brighten with another, equally absorbing but far darker nine-tracker.
On I Want Blood, the 58-year-old icon has given fans yet more to chew on. While no longer the disturbed and frightened young man that recorded Alice In Chains’ terrifying 1992 classic Dirt, thunderclouds continue to gather in any artistic airspace Jerry enters. They’re present throughout terse opener Vilified, which features more of the genius riff-making and trademark languid melodies that between them comprise the tonal contrasts almost unique to his music.
Spidery guitar licks introduce Off The Rails before several cleverly-worked time changes and a characterful hook reward the patient. The hypnotic Afterglow emphasises his ability with persuasive harmonies – they coil snake-like as this storied artist reflects on his past, and the need to keep pushing. ‘Far below the surface there, breathe a heavy sigh / Stand alone in a circle squared, preparing to try,’ he emotes.
Brooding guitars – the ones we somewhat missed on Brighten – surge on Let It Lie while the title track has much of the gallop that characterises Queens Of The Stone Age’s more celebrated music, but it’s smeared, of course, with Jerry's lashing six-string and huge harmonies.
It’s an altogether more oppressive album than Brighten, and therefore something that Alice In Chains fans are going to want in their lives. That said, I Want Blood still knows when to pause for breath. Echoes Of Laughter is a delicious slowburn – if incense had a sound, you’d hear it here – while closer It Comes is among the most considered music he has ever written.
Nobody confronts endings quite as starkly as this artist, and here he muses on chapters – and lives – closing, in sensitive fashion. A unique artist, we’re lucky to have him.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Alice In Chains, Queens Of The Stone Age, Tremonti
I Want Blood is released on October 18 via Double J Music
