While, as the title suggested, 2021’s Brighten album found Jerry Cantrell taking a lighter, more positive look at the world around him, its follow-up is its equal and opposite, an evil twin, a beautiful thing of the shadows. In fact, while all of Cantrell’s solo work naturally has Alice In Chains embedded deep in its DNA, I Want Blood digs deep down to the gnarled roots of the band.
Cantrell’s name may be above the door, but as ever he’s brought together an impeccable supporting cast to bring his vision to life, with Duff McKagan and Robert Trujillo back on bass, Faith No More’s Mike Bordin and Team Sleeps’s Gil Sharone on drums, and backing vocals from composer Lola Colette and ex-Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato. With that kind of personnel the quality of the musicianship on display is a given, and the team provide a flawless canvas for Cantrell’s ever-dazzling guitar playing.
I Want Blood’s descent into the gloaming is subtle, a journey you don’t know you’re going on until Cantrell chooses to reveal the final destination. It begins, explosively, with Villified, a driving grunge master class that rails against the rise of AI, dense enough to draw the air out of the room, claustrophobic, but lit up with merciless dive-bomb guitar licks. After 30 years at the top of his game, Cantrell’s voice remains as strong as ever, unwavering and carrying a portentous authority. Similarly, Let It Lie, with its pounding, doom-laden, Black Sabbath-influenced riff, is the punch in the nose none of us knew we needed.
There are moments of joy to be found along the way. The title track is a beast, a hooky, driving slab of classic rock that shimmers with switchblade malevolence and desert-hued cool. Cantrell revisits the country of Brighten on Echoes Of Laughter, a tar-textured western rooting for the guy in the black hat, while Hold Your Tongue develops into a woozy dreamscape that invokes (Don’t Fear) The Reaper before peeling off back off onto the steely alt.rock path upon which it began.
With clouds gathering along the journey, it’s all leading to the end point. It Comes, despite its chiming of starburst of guitars, is a bleak lullaby for the lost, dragging us back under into the darkness Cantrell patented back with AIC’s Down In A Hole or Rooster all those years ago. ‘Let me go, it’s all over,’ he sings, a ringing note of despair hanging in the air and lingering in the mind long after the record fades to black.
This is flawless and unflinching classic rock for a cruel modern world, and it’s quite brilliant.
