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Alice in Chains Biography :
 A metal band with an alternative-rock edge, Alice in Chains was among the biggest to emerge from the grunge scene that spawned Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. The group's dark, bitter songs, laden with references to drug addiction and death, occupy a musical landscape somewhere between Metallica's dense head bangers and Pearl Jam's grinding anthems. Layne Staley formed Alice in Chains with an earlier lineup while still in high school. In 1987 he met Jerry Cantrell at the Music Bank, a notorious Seattle warehouse rehearsal space, and the two put together the newly christened Alice in Chains along with Cantrell cohorts Kinney and Starr. By 1989 the group had signed to Columbia Records, where it became the beneficiary of an aggressive promotion campaign that saw the release of a five-song promotional EP, We Die Young, and had the group opening for a range of disparate acts, including Iggy Pop and Poison. As a result, by September 1991, Face Lift (#42) had sold a half-million copies and featured the Grammy-nominated “Man in the Box.” A low-key and mostly acoustic EP, Sap, and a track in the Seattle youth culture movie Singles kept the band in the public eye between albums.
The group’s thematically bleaker sophomore effort, Dirt (#6), went platinum in 1992 (eventually selling 3 million copies), and the group’s appearance on the following summer’s Lollapalooza Tour confirmed its popularity. Reports of drug abuse, however, had begun to plague Staley and the band; a couple of songs from Dirt - “Junkhead” and “Angry Chair” - had hinted at mental fatigue and self-destruction. Yet  Alice in Chains’ success was at an all-time high: In late 1993 Dirt went double-platinum, and the following year the acoustic Jar of Flies rocketed to #1, the first EP to ever top the Billboard album chart. In 1994 Staley hooked up with fellow Seattleites Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees), and John Baker Saunders to play a few gigs under the name Gacy Bunch; the next year they changed their name to Mad Season and released Above (#24, 1995), but Staley quit the side project (replaced by Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees) before its second album.
In 1995 Alice in Chains returned to action with a self-titled album (which debuted at #1), but the quartet failed to tour, owing to internal discord and rumored addictions. Even so, the band reconvened in 1996 for its first public performance in three years to record and release MTV Unplugged (#3), which stripped the band’s hard-rock sound to an acoustic, unexpectedly melodic core. Nothing new was heard from Alice in Chains until the 1999 release of Music Bank (and the excerpted Nothing Safe - Best of the Box). Named for the warehouse where the band lived and recorded in its early days, the album was a 48-song collection that mixed two new tracks (“Get Born Again” and “Died”) with the band’s hits, live recordings, demos, and B sides. Another anthology of sorts, Live documented performances from throughout the band’s career.
On April 20, 2002, Layne Staley’s body was found in his Seattle apartment fifteen days after the lead singer died from an overdose of cocaine and heroin.
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More about Alice in Chains :
In many ways, Alice in Chains was the definitive heavy metal band of the early '90s. Drawing equally from the heavy riffing of post-Van Halen metal and the gloomy strains of post-punk, the band developed a bleak, nihilistic sound that balanced grinding hard rock with subtly textured acoustic numbers. They were hard enough for metal fans, yet their dark subject matter and punky attack placed them among the front ranks of the Seattle-based grunge bands. While this dichotomy helped the group soar to multi-platinum status with their second album, 1992's Dirt, it also divided them. Guitarist Jerry Cantrell always leaned toward the mainstream, while vocalist Layne Staley was fascinated with the seamy underground. Such tension drove the band toward stardom in their early years, but following Dirt, Alice in Chains suffered from near-crippling internal tensions that kept the band off the road for the remainder of the '90s and, consequently, the group never quite fulfilled their potential.
 Staley formed the initial incarnation of the band while in high school in the mid-'80s, naming the group Alice N Chains. Staley met Cantrell in 1987 at the Seattle rehearsal warehouse the Music Bank and the two began working together, changing the group's name to Alice in Chains. Cantrell's friends Mike Starr (bass) and Sean Kinney (drums) rounded out the lineup,and the band began playing local Seattle clubs. Columbia Records signed the group in 1989 and the label quickly made the band a priority, targeting heavy metal audiences. Early in 1990, the label released the We Die Young EP as a promotional device and the song became a hit on metal radio, setting the stage for the summer release of the group's debut, Facelift. Alice in Chains supported the album by opening for Van Halen, Poison, and Iggy Pop, and it became a hit, going gold by the end of the year. As the band prepared their second album, they released the largely acoustic EP Sap in 1991 to strong reviews.
Prior to the release of Alice in Chains' second album, Seattle became a media sensation thanks to the surprise success of Nirvana. As a result, Alice was now marketed as an alternative band, not as a metal outfit, and the group landed a song, the menacing "Would?," on the Singles soundtrack during the summer of 1992. "Would?" helped build anticipation for Dirt, the group's relentlessly bleak second album that was released in the fall of 1992 to very good reviews. Following its release, Starr left and was replaced by Mike Inez. Dirt went platinum by the end of 1992, but its gloomy lyrics launched many rumors that Staley was addicted to heroin. Alice in Chains soldiered on in the face of such criticism, performing successfully on the third Lollapalooza tour in 1993, which helped Dirt reach sales of three million.
The band released the low-key EP Jar of Flies in early 1994. It debuted at number one upon its release, becoming the first EP to top the album charts. Despite the band's continued success, they stayed off the road, which fueled speculation that Staley was mired in heroin addiction. Later that year, Staley did give a few concerts as part of the Gacy Bunch, a Seattle supergroup also featuring Pearl Jam's Mike McCready, the Screaming Trees' Barrett Martin, and John Saunders. The group subsequently renamed itself Mad Season and released Above in early 1995. Later that year, Alice in Chains re-emerged with an eponymous third album, which debuted at number one on the American charts. Again, the band chose not to tour, which launched yet another round of speculation that band was suffering from various addictions and were on the verge of disbanding. The group did give one concert -- their first in three years -- in 1996, performing for an episode of MTV Unplugged, which was released as an album that summer. Despite its success, the album did nothing to dispel doubts about the group's future and neither did Cantrell's solo album, Boggy Depot, in 1998.
 Cantrell basically released Boggy Depot because he couldn't get Staley to work, but its very existence -- and the presence of Inez and Kinney on the record, not to mention Alice producer Toby Wright -- seemed to confirm that the group was on moratorium at best, defunct at worst. Staley, for his part, stayed quiet, conceding his spot on Mad Season's second album to Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan. In 1999, Sony put together a three-disc Alice in Chains box set, Music Bank, divided between the group's best work and assorted rarities. At the turn of the new millennium, Columbia Records issued Live, which plucked material from bootlegs, demos, and festival shows covering the years 1990, 1993, and 1996.
As if the group hadn't been repackaged as many times as possible with its limited repertoire, a ten-track best-of set, Greatest Hits, appeared in July 2001. With no sign of the group reclaiming their spot atop the alt-metal heap (and such copycat acts as Godsmack, Days of the New, Puddle of Mudd, and Creed taking the Alice in Chains formula to the top of the charts), Cantrell completed his sophomore solo effort, Degradation Trip, in 2002. But just two months before the album's release, in April 2002, the news that every Alice in Chains fan had been fearing for years had finally come to pass: Layne Staley was found dead due to a lethal overdose of cocaine and heroin. Although understandably grief-stricken, Cantrell launched his solo album's supporting tour according to schedule, opting to open shows in the summer for another Alice in Chains-influenced band, Nickelback. Alice in Chains spent the next few years in limbo, eventually reuniting in 2005 for a benefit show with Damageplan vocalist Pat Lachman filling in for the deceased Staley. After rotating through a handful of different singers, the group eventually settled on Comes with the Fall vocalist William DuVall, who appeared on the group's 2009 comeback record Black Gives Way to Blue. Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Greg Prato, All Music Guide
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