A lot of them were done in just half an hour.' I made this effect using delays on Layne’s vocals with an Eventide Harmonizer in fact, I called the effect ‘Layne Staley.’ Reverb can darken things up, but delays keep things hard and powerful,' said Jerden. He knocked out his parts and just sang great.

'I tripled-tracked him, and he sounded great. You can really hear the thickness in songs like 'Them Bones' and 'Rooster'.ĭave Jerden behind the boardIn de Sola's book, Carlstrom recalls Staley had created an inspirational shrine in the booth that included candles and a picture of the Last Supper, as well as a dead puppy in a jar.Īs for how Jerden produced Staley's booming voice, he said he had two 24-track machines and used 16 tracks for Staley's vocal parts.

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 No. Among the truly great heavy metal albums, Alice in Chains' masterpiece Dirt is easily a cut above the rest.

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