You can really hear the thickness in songs like “Them Bones” and “Rooster”. Jerden and engineer Bryan Carlstrom built a customized splitter box that split the guitar into the three amps and cut down on the hissing and buzzing created from such a process.

Then those tracks were double and triple tracked to fatten up the sound.

Turns out Cantrell actually recorded each riff through high, mid and low frequency amps to get three different tones. Produced by Dave Jerden, who also worked with AIC on their debut Facelift album, Dirt has a doomy, heavy sound that announced the band as one of the heavy hitters in rock at the time.Īnd central to that amazing sound is how guitarist and principal music writer Jerry Cantrell got those super thick and heavy guitar tones. Billboard chart, no small feat for band that got little airplay and a record with drug addiction, depression and anger as central themes.īut, aside from the lyrics and amazing songs, what makes Dirt such a great record is how good it sounds. Released in September, 1992, Dirt took the Seattle band to №6 on the U.S. Among the truly great heavy metal albums, Alice in Chains’ masterpiece Dirt is easily a cut above the rest.

Alice in chains dirt album genius