I guess it would’ve been silly for him to call the album ‘Darken’, but as Jerry Cantrell follows up his 2021 solo album, Brighten, with I Want Blood due out this Oct. 18 through Double J Records, that seems to be the vibe the Alice in Chains guitarist and reluctant grunge figurehead (could there be another kind?) is shooting for anyhow. In the parlance of probably-not-our-times-anymore, I’m here for it.

Solo output from Cantrell — who’s a no-brainer to rate among the best rock songwriters of his generation, as well as an accomplished guitarist and vocalist — has been a mixed bag over the course of his career. Brighten mostly left me cold, whereas 2002’s Degradation Trip (discussed here) features what’s for my money some of the best work he’s ever done in or out of his central band. I haven’t heard I Want Blood and so can’t comment on how the lead single/opening track fits in with the overall spirit of the release, but certainly it’s fair to say the initial impression here is more aggressive and, indeed, darker than last time out. Throw in a depressive cut or seven and that’s a wheelhouse in which it’s well established Cantrell can thrive.

I look forward to hearing more, and I’m glad Cantrell‘s collaboration with Greg Puciato is continuing, as the The Dillinger Escape Plan) singer’s voice was a striking complement in harmony with Cantrell‘s own from all the live footage I saw supporting Brighten. Cantrell also has summer tour dates upcoming — I don’t think Puciato will join, but I also don’t know that he won’t — and he’ll be out with Bush, which would be a great show to get there early and leave early, because that band has always sucked.

From the PR wire:

JERRY CANTRELL ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM I WANT BLOOD, OUT OCTOBER 18 VIA DOUBLE J MUSIC

FEATURING GUEST PERFORMANCES FROM DUFF MCKAGAN, ROBERT TRUJILLO, MIKE BORDIN AND MORE

ALBUM PRE-ORDERS AVAILABLE NOW: https://bio.to/JerryCantrell

Jerry Cantrell, one of rock music’s most distinctive musicians, returns with I Want Blood, an album brimming with Cantrell’s signature vocals and guitar-driven melodies, on Oct. 18 via Double J Music.

“This record is a serious piece of work. It’s a motherfucker,” Cantrell says of the infectious collection. “It’s hard, no doubt, and completely unlike Brighten. And that’s what you want, to end up in a different place. There’s a confidence to this album. I think it’s some of my best songwriting and playing, and certainly some of my best singing.”

A preview of I Want Blood comes with today’s release of “Vilified”. The album opener showcases an energy that rivals any of Cantrell’s previous work – powerful, nuanced, and electric – setting the tone for the 45-minute album.

“‘Vilified” travels a lot of places in just four and a half minutes,” Cantrell continues. “It’s got a ferocity and really aggressive vibe to it.”

I Want Blood, co-produced by Cantrell and Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Melvins), was recorded at Barresi’s JHOC Studio in Pasadena, Calif. The album also features contributions from bass heavyweights Duff McKagan (Guns N’Roses) and Robert Trujillo (Metallica), drummers Gil Sharone (Team Sleep, Stolen Babies) and Mike Bordin (Faith No More), and backing vocals from Lola Colette and Greg Puciato (Better Lovers, ex-Dillinger Escape Plan).

I Want Blood track list:

1. Vilified
2. Off The Rails
3. Afterglow
4. I Want Blood
5. Echoes Of Laughter
6. Throw Me A Line
7. Let It Lie
8. Held Your Tongue
9. It Comes

Album pre-orders, which include CD, digital and multiple 2LP variants are available here: https://bio.to/JerryCantrell.

Exclusive to the 2LP vinyl versions of I Want Blood are atmospheric, spoken word versions of each song on the album.

Jerry Cantrell kicks off a North American tour this evening, joining Bush for a seven-week trek across the continent:

July 26 Bend, OR Hayden Homes Amphitheater
July 27 Airway Heights, WA BECU Live
July 31 West Valley Utah, UT Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre
August 1 Greenwood Village, CO Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
August 3 La Crosse, WI Copeland Park
August 4 Indianapolis, IN Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park
August 6 Cedar Rapids, IA McGrath Amphitheatre
August 7 Chicago, IL Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
August 9 Nashville, TN Nashville Municipal Auditorium
August 10 Maryland Heights, MO St. Louis Music Park
August 13 Cleveland, OH Jacobs Pavilion
August 14 Cincinnati, OH Riverbend Music Center
August 16 Sterling Heights, MI Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill
August 17 Lewiston, NY Artpark Amphitheater
August 19 Toronto, ON Budweiser Stage
August 21 Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
August 23 Atlantic City, NJ Hard Rock Live at Etess Arena
August 24 Boston, MA Leader Bank Pavilion
August 26 Charlotte, NC Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre
August 27 Raleigh, NC Red Hat Amphitheatre
August 29 Jacksonville, FL Daily’s Place
August 30 Davie, FL Hard Rock Live (Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood)
September 1 Atlanta, GA Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park
September 4 San Antonio, TX Freeman Coliseum
September 5 Houston, TX 713 Music Hall
September 7 Durant, OK Choctaw Casino & Resort
September 8 Dallas, TX Dos Equis Pavilion
September 11 Las Vegas, NV Bakkt Theater
September 13 San Diego, CA Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
September 14 Phoenix, AZ Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
September 15 Los Angeles, CA The Greek Theatre

Jerrycantrell.com
Facebook.com/officialjerrycantrell
Instagram.com/jerrycantrell

Jerry Cantrell, “Vilified” official video

When Jerry Cantrell, best known as the guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter for Alice in Chains, put out his second solo album, Degradation Trip, in 2002, it had only been four years since the prior Boggy Depot, but what a four years. As the country went from the-late-1990s-ideal-that-the-machines-used-to-make-the-Matrix to post-9/11 paranoia and began what would become an entire generation’s span of war, Cantrell was four years deeper into the loss of Alice in Chains‘ frontman, Layne Staley — who is mourned throughout the record — even though the whopping 25 songs in the two-plus hours of the special edition Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 were written before he actually died; this makes sense if you’ve ever lost somebody to heroin addiction; they’re gone first, then they’re dead. I seem to recall there was a divorce in there too, but don’t quote me on that and all I can find in searching for info on it is about his parents splitting when he was a kid.

In any case, the story goes that Cantrell locked himself in the house for four months and wrote the demos for what would become these songs on his guitar. I’ve only interviewed him once, in 2005, when Alice in Chains — Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, drummer Sean Kinney and vocalist William DuVall, who had previously toured with Cantrell‘s solo band and played in Comes With the Fall — got back together for a VH-1 tribute to Seattle legends Heart, but in that interview, I asked if he’d ever release those demos. It was a long time ago, but I seem to recall he might’ve laughed as he said no.

Even in their finished forms, the tracks of Degradation Trip — issued by Roadrunner, first as a single disc, then a few months later in the 2CD Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 — have their raw moments. “Solitude,” “What it Takes,” “Castaway,” the dramatic solo instrumental “Hurts Don’t It?,” and so on. For a record with a professional-style production, a largely untouchable rhythm section in bassist Robert Trujillo (who’d join Metallica the next year) and drummer Mike Bordin (Faith No More), who had been playing together in Ozzy Osbourne‘s touring band, and such hooky, single-ready fare as “Angel Eyes,” “Anger Rising,” “She Was My Girl,” “Give it a Name” “Hellbound,” and others, there’s also room in its massive runtime for a song like “Feel the Void,” which rolls out in a more thoroughly doomed style, melodic but working on a linear structure and with a patience that even the acoustic “Gone” at the end of the first disc and “31/32” at the end of the second — both gorgeous — can’t match. Songs throughout reach brazenly over seven minutes or eight in the case of the nodding “Pig Charmer” but are balanced against the more traditional, straightforward songs — “Pig Charmer” for example, has “She Was My Girl” before it and “Anger Rising After.” Its Vol. 1 get-weird counterpart, “Feel the Void,” follows the catchy “Pro False Idol” and leads into the breakout chorus in “Locked On,” so yes, there is symmetry between the two parts of the album, which was reissued as a 4LP in 2019.

That actually might be a good way to experience Degradation Trip, with all the breaks and side flips inherent in a vinyl listen. Taken front to back, Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 is a powerful, consuming and quite possibly overwhelming way to spend the better part of an afternoon. Cantrell weaves in and out of different styles but wraps all of them in his own weighted approach, be it the hard-riffed “Bargain Basement Howard Hughes” or “Mother’s Spinning in Her Grave (Glass Dick Jones)” or “Owned” or the mellower-but-miserable “S.O.S.” or the purely Alice in Chains-style harmonic engagement of “Spiderbite,” “Siddhartha,” the lead cut “Psychotic Break” and “Dying Inside.” Even the most out-there stretches of Vol. 2 are Cantrell‘s own, expanding on ideas brought later to Alice in Chains and digging in in a way that feels especially bold for someone who had spent the last decade-plus in a professional, commercially viable and successful band. I suppose on the scale of underground heavy, it’s all still relatively accessible — dude was never going to do screamy sludgecore or something like that — but for the scale of release, there are plenty of moments that feel brave.

And as he had already long since proven, Cantrell is one of the best rock songwriters of his generation. That comes through from “Psychotic Break” onward, and apart from the unifying factor of melody in the material whatever might be going on structurally in a given track, Cantrell finds ways to hone memorability, be it the soaring leads of “Hurts Don’t It?” or the lyrical wistfulness of “31/32.” A big part of what makes Degradation Trip Vol. 1 & 2 so powerful is the emotionality, and taken in combination with the fact that there’s just so much of it in the two-volume edition, that too-much-on-the-brain feeling comes through all the more in ways perhaps even Cantrell himself wouldn’t have intended. Ups, downs, through and behind, this album goes places that one of the most storied careers in rock music — period — had never gone before and hasn’t gone to since.

I’ll rarely go to bat for double-CD releases. A 2LP?  Well, that can be anywhere from 50 minutes to almost 90, so there’s a range there — a lot of 2LPs still fit on a single CD — but 2CDs more often than not are excessive and could either be a full-length and an EP or, as in many cases, just two full-lengths released in succession, or a bunch of tracks get held back for other uses in service to a great single album. To wit, I firmly believe The White Album — and yes, I know that’s not the official name but you fucking know what I’m talking about — should be a single LP. Degradation Trip works better as two full albums, but had they come out separately, so much of the strength of the release, the gone-so-deep-you’d-be-lost-if-the-songs-weren’t-so-good atmosphere projected across the span is what would be sacrificed, and even as firm as I am in my opinion on double-albums, I have to acknowledge the periodic exception to every rule, even my own.

This is a record that I love in a personal way. I hadn’t listened to it in years and still was singing along by the time the verses started. It’s that kind of thing.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Writing from the train at the Turtle Back Zoo, staple of any Northern New Jersey childhood, certainly my own. Thankfully it’s been redone since the ’80s when I’d have come here with my mother and no doubt there were all sorts of poisonous lizards running around loose roaming lions, no science, etc. We’re here with the Pecan. He earned it.

Monday was his last diaper. We had told him it was coming and it was two of the hardest days I’ve yet had as a parent, but where nothing else worked, he now pees and poops in the toilet. It’s only been two and a half years.

But yeah, the train ride is ending and then it’s off to face painting and then maybe I think eventually to see an animal or two, pony ride, sprinkler, carousel, etc. Sun is burning.

He also got Lego monster trucks, ice cream and I let him steer the car while I worked the pedals. Right now he’s trying to pee with The Patient Mrs. in the zoo ladies room, which will be a first in-public pee. I feel like it’s a milestone for me more than him.

Next week, tons of shit. I have notes, couldn’t even tell you where they start. Thanks for reading, great and safe weekend. Hydrate. It’s hot out here.

FRM.

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