Jerry Cantrell on New Alice in Chains Album: ‘There’s Some Real Filth in There’

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Alice in Chains’ new album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, comes out this May. It’s the Seattle’s band follow-up to Black Gives Way to Blue and the second album with vocalist–guitarist William DuVall. According to singer-guitarist Jerry Cantrell, the band feels like they’ve made a major jump with the new album.

«We made a unique record that’s completely different from anything we ever did,» he tells Rolling Stone. «It encapsulates a period of time, like all records do. You see growth and that the band is moving ahead in new territory that we haven’t been to before, but we haven’t lost our identity.»

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The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, again produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who did Black Gives Way to Blue, finds Alice in Chains digging in the dirt on songs like the methodical title track, «Lab Monkey,» and «Stone.»

«There’s some real filth in there. That’s intentional, and that’s also just how we sound together,» Cantrell says of the record’s deep, gritty sound. «We’re trying to make a record that we dig and we’re trying to keep the bar high for ourselves and see if we can get past it, and I think that we did again. And of course you want people to dig it too and to respond to it, and to have that start happening is satisfying.»

It’s started happening with the lead single and opening track, «Hollow,» which hit Number One on the rock radio charts. Despite the fact that Alice in Chains’ forays into the murky waters have consistently proven to lead to both commercial and radio success, Cantrell was still pleasantly surprised by the song’s immediate acceptance.

«The initial response to ‘Hollow’ has been fucking incredible, totally not what we intended, and that’s fucking awesome,» he says. «We just put that song out there for the fans and then it ended up turning into a number one single, a six-minute sludgy metal tune. That’s always fun, to see something like that happen.»

Alice will be doing some upcoming dates with Soundgarden, which Cantrell is looking forward to. «I just saw Soundgarden a couple of nights ago at the Wiltern and it was a really great show,» he says.

For Cantrell, the road is the best place to catch up with old friends. «You maybe haven’t seen each other in years, and you meet in fucking Wisconsin because you’re playing together, or fucking Berlin or wherever – odd places on the globe you meet up and catch up again.»

He’s excited to incorporate the new material into the live show. «It’s always great for us because we get new shit to play for people, and alongside of that we’ve been fortunate to have a pretty long career and have a lot of material that people react to,» he says. «There’s really not any song in our repertoire that you can’t play live . . . The bolts of the song, we can play our shit. It’s kind of a lost art these days, to actually play your stuff without having to have some tracks to help you out,» he adds, laughing.

The band got some credit in the recent Judd Apatow comedy This Is 40, in which their track «Rooster» was cited by Paul Rudd’s character as «real rock.» Cantrell says it was an honor to be included in the film. «We had heard Judd was interested in using that song in a scene and we were like, ‘Of course,'» he says. «We’re fans of his work as well, and it is really cool to see his love of music.»

Apatow invited Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney to the premiere, where they made an unexpected connection. «His grandma, they have some jazz label, her and her husband, and she was really interested in Sean,» Cantrell recalls. «We went over and talked to her and she was trying to sign us to her label, which was fucking awesome.»

So have the two ever considered starting a jazz band? «If it’s for Judd’s grandma, we might have to,» he says, cracking up.

Jerry Cantrell, guitarrista de Alice In Chains, ha charlado con Rolling Stone sobre “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here”, el nuevo disco del grupo que aparecerá en mayo.

Hemos hecho un disco único que es completamente diferente de cualquier cosa que hayamos hecho. Condensa un periodo de tiempo, como hacen todos los discos. Ves el crecimiento y que la banda se dirige a nuevos territorios en los que no habíamos estado antes pero no hemos perdido nuestra identidad.

Con temas como “Lab Monkey” o “Stone”, Cantrell asegura que el material, producido por Nick Raskulinecz tiene “auténtica suciedad. De forma intencionada y es que así es como sonamos juntos. Estamos tratando de hacer un disco que nos guste y tratamos de mantener el listón alto por nosotros y ver si podemos superarlo y creo que lo hemos hecho de nuevo. Y por supuesto, queremos que a la gente le guste también y responda, y que eso empiece a pasar es satisfactorio.”

El músico, pese al tiempo que lleva ya en el negocio, se sigue sorprendiendo como los temas de su banda siguen logrando tal aceptación comercial: “Hollow”, el anticipo del nuevo largo, logró encaramarse al primer puesto de las listas de radios de rock de EEUU.

La respuesta inicial a “Hollow” ha sido jodidamente increíble, no lo que esperábamos y eso es la hostia. Simplemente sacamos un tema para los fans y acabó convirtiéndose en un single número uno, un tema de metal pantanoso de seis minutos. Y eso siempre es divertido, ver como pasa algo así.

El cuarteto coincidirá próximamente en algunas fechas con Soundgarden:

Vi a Soundgarden hace un par de noches en el Wiltern y fue un concierto realmente genial.

Cantrell se muestra orgulloso de las capacidades del grupo:

Siempre es genial (tocar en directo) porque tenemos nueva mierda para la gente y junto a eso, hemos tenido la suerte de tener una carrera bastante larga y tenemos mucho material que hace reaccionar a la gente. No tenemos ninguna canción en nuestro repertorio que no podamos tocar en directo… Los tornillos de la canción, podemos tocar nuestra mierda. Es una especie de arte perdido en estos tiempos, tocar tu material sin que te hagan falta pistas (grabadas) de apoyo.

En otro orden de cosas, le preguntan al músico por la inclusión en el último film de Judd Apatow, “This Is 40″, del tema “Rooster”.

Oímos que Judd estaba interesado en usar esa canción en una escena y dijimos, “Por supuesto”. Somos fans de su trabajo y mola ver su amor por la música.

El director invitó a Cantrell y al batería Sean Kinney:

Su abuela, tienen una especie de sello de jazz, ella y su marido, y la verdad es que estaba muy interesada en Sean. Fuimos y hablamos con ella, y la verdad es que nos quiso fichar para su sello, lo cual fue la puta hostia. Si, quizá tengamos que montar una banda de jazz.