Seattle in the late '80s had plenty of loud bands. Alice in Chains, formed there in 1987, were the ones who sounded like they were sinking: Jerry Cantrell's sludgy, detuned riffs under Layne Staley's voice, with the two of them harmonizing in that queasy way nobody has really copied since.
The strange part of their run is how much of it came from the quiet records. Jar of Flies, an acoustic EP that followed Dirt, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the first EP ever to do that. The self-titled album followed it to No. 1 in 1995.
Staley died in 2002. When Cantrell, Kinney and bassist Mike Inez regrouped in 2006, William DuVall came in as frontman, and he has split lead vocals with Cantrell ever since. Three albums since: Black Gives Way to Blue in 2009, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here in 2013 and Rainier Fog in 2018. Columbus has seen this version of the band a lot, at Rock on the Range in 2009, 2013 and 2018.
The last two years have been quieter than anyone wanted. In May 2025, Kinney had a non-life-threatening medical emergency after soundcheck at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut; that show was canceled, and the next day the band called off its upcoming festival and headline dates, saying his long-term prognosis was positive. Meanwhile the catalog kept moving. A long-overdue vinyl reissue of the self-titled album entered Billboard's Vinyl Albums chart at No. 2 in February 2026.