By Lane Oliver
When Alice in Chains announced they were working on new material back around 2008 with new vocalist William DuVall, a lot of people were skeptical including me. I pondered how will Alice in Chains sound after over a decade between albums and with someone other than the late great Layne Staley on vocals. 2009’s Black Gives Way to Blue shattered all denial for me and confirmed that after all of these years the band still had it. I can’t necessarily compare DuVall era Alice to Staley era Alice since they are both their own respective entities. Black Gives Way to Blue showed us a band that did not want to reunite just revel in their former glory; it showed us a hard working band who is interested in moving forward. Four years later Alice in Chains give us The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here; the fifth full length album from the band. This highly anticipated record had a lot riding on it since it being the follow up to a pretty solid comeback album. So is The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here a big step forward or two steps back?
Fucking incredible. That’s what I thought about Alice In Chains‘ first single off of their new album The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. When “Hollow” was released, I was taken aback, for I had not even dabbled in the band’s previous album Black Gives Way To Blue. I fell in love with “Hollow” and now I have fallen for another new song called “Stone.” 
Remember that 
Well, well, well. This is pretty great. I have expressed my undying love for Layne Staley-era Alice In Chains before but I don’t think I ever expressed me feelings about the last record, and William DuVall’s vocal debut, Black Gives Way To Blue. When it was first released, I didn’t listen to it. I couldn’t. Layne Staley was one of the greatest vocalists of all time and seeing Alice In Chains push on just didn’t settle right with me. I finally did listen to Black Gives Way To Blue and it’s not bad. Not bad at all, actually. William DuVall has an amazing voice and he is clearly influenced by Layne’s vocal styling.
If any of you listened to rock radio in the early 2000s then you probably (at some point) heard Smile Empty Soul‘s hit single “Bottom Of A Bottle.” Smile Empty Soul is a band that I thought long gone. I haven’t heard anything about the band since, like, 2004. Well, apparently they are still going strong and they released a new album back in May on eOne Music. That’s not the point of this post, however because I care nothing about this band. The point of this post is that Smile Empty Soul along with HURT have recorded a cover of the Alice In Chains classic “No Excuses.” 
