Few bands survive the reboot Alice In Chains launched in 2008, six years after the death of its troubled powerhouse singer, Layne Staley. Guitarist Jerry Cantrell admits the idea of reemerging from stasis with a new vocalist, William DuVall, felt like a gamble. The result was Black Gives Way To Blue, a work worthy of standing alongside the band’s masterpiece, 1992’s Dirt. Though few would have predicted such a return to form, the album was certified gold, topped scads of best-of lists and launched two full tours. The new The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here stays true to the Alice In Chains sound, a dense shroud of gloom occasionally lifted by soaring harmonies and delicate riffs. For every dirge stomp like “Pretty Done” and the menacing creep of “Lab Monkey,” there are echoes of Jar Of Flies’ haunted acoustic beauty (“Voices,” “Choke”) or the filthy groove of “Stone,” the album’s second single. DuVall will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Alice In Chains feature.
DuVall: Milford Graves is a musician, scientist, holistic healer, educator, computer-software author and martial-arts inventor. As if all that isn’t enough, he is also now doing some of the most cutting-edge cardiological research being done anywhere in the world. Never before have I encountered anyone so innovative in so many fields of endeavor, every one of them self-taught. This man possesses sacred ancient knowledge but applies it to cutting edge working methods in a way that could literally change the world. For all of these reasons and more, I decided to make a film about him entitled Ancient To Future: The Wisdom Of Milford Graves. The film is still in production while we await the outcome of a potentially game-changing scientific collaboration between Milford and a team of stem-cell researchers at the University of Bologna in Italy. In the meantime, here is a very early rough cut of a trailer.
Video after the jump.
