Alice in Chains

A sludgy, creepy masterpiece and probably the best record ever to be cursed with the Grunge label, Alice In Chains' Dirt relentlessly explores singer Layne Staley's very real and very disturbing addiction to heroin. Jerry Cantrell's wah-heavy Sabbath riffs trudge through the murk like a brontosaurus and Staley's vocals were never more Morrison-meets-Ozzy.

A heroin album, take it or leave it--"Junkhead" certainly isn't "ironic" and probably isn't "fictional" either. Crunch crunch crunch, riff riff riff--way harder, louder, and more metallic than Soundgarden ever will be. But the price of this power is that it's also uglier and stupider--the sound of hopeless craving. Sitting here with my "books and degrees" (well, degree), I very much doubt that if I "opened my mind," as resident sickman Layne Staley suggests, I'd be "doing" like him (er, the narrator of the song). I'll wait for my own man, thank you. (Grade - B)