Alice In Chains were under no illusions that the world was “voting against” them when the pioneering alternative metal outfit decided to record an album for the first time in well over a decade.
The band, who will return for Soundwave next year, released Black Gives Way To Blue in 2009 – their first record since 1995's Alice In Chains. In a new interview with The Music, the band's current vocalist William DuVall's admits that they knew how far they stood to fall.
“We weren't naive about any of this stuff, about what we were trying to do, and we weren't naive about the success rate or lack thereof of bands that tried to do something similar,” he says. “It was a pretty tall order.
“The momentum that we'd built organically with all the touring in 2006 and 2007 certainly helped light a fire in the studio, but there was no guarantee,” he continues. “We knew that in terms of odds-making they were not in our favour, and just like when we started touring in 2006, we knew that with recording Black Gives Way To Blue there were a lot of people voting against us, there were a lot of people that wanted to see us fail.”
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Widely acclaimed and a more than fitting addition to their legacy, the band returned to the studio for this year's The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. It's an album that may not have happened had Black… proved a flop.
“There's no telling,” DuVall says, “and we don't really have the answer for that.”
