Alice In Chains’ highly anticipated new album, ‘Black Gives Way To Blue’, finally comes out on September 29. AndВ it will be more then natural to put them as Jack Daniel’s band of the week on radio Tangra Mega Rock, starting this coming Monday!
All four band members sat down with none other than James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich of Metallica to discuss their new work for an FMQB radio special, dubbed Inside Alice In Chains: ‘Black Gives Way To Blue’. The special is airing on radio stations nationwide between September 25 and 29, and the group talked very openly about moving on after the death of Layne Staley, writing songs with new singer William DuVall, and having Elton John play on the title track.
When asked by Hetfield what the album title means to the band, guitarist Jerry Cantrell explained that the title track is a song about Staley. “It’s a really intense song and a really open-hearted song because of Layne and the experience that we all went through,” he said. “It’s [about] facing up to that stuff and all the good and all the bad and moving forward together. It speaks to [the fact that] things were pretty black for us. It’s pretty literal, and things are starting to get a little lighter.”
Cantrell also stated that having Elton John play on the song was an honor, because Elton was the first musician that he really admired. “It was a really heavy thing for me, because my whole journey starts with him. That was the first guy I really got into,” Cantrell said. “Then I started discovering guitar bands like AC/DC and Kiss and all sorts of other stuff. But Elton was the first thing that turned the light on for me. So to have that come full circle for all of us – for what we’ve all been through – and for who that song is about, it’s a pretty heavy thing. It’s one of the few moments in life where the universe really lines up and tells you you’re doing the right thing.”