Out For Blood

Alice in Chains mainstay Jerry Cantrell explains why (and how) he swerved into “a much more aggressive lane” for his new solo outing, I Want Blood. Plus Al hysteria, misplaced G&L guitars and Jeff Beck’s bag...

- Gregory Adams

WHEN GUITAR WORLD reaches the alternative metal icon - and founding guitarist of Alice in Chains - he's been running the press gauntlet on a rare day off from his summer tour supporting U.K. rockers Bush. This is Cantrell's fourth call in as many hours, and while he's more than willing to dig into the meat of I Want Blood - the guitarist's sensationally snarling new solo album - he also notes that talking about himself for so long has worked up an appetite. In an admission befitting the record's insatiable title, he says he's ripping into a steak the second he wraps the interview.

Sure enough, there's a ton of bite to I Want Blood, too. That much was clear once Cantrell unveiled first single "Vilified," a brooding-but-teeth-bearing attack on social media pile-on culture and the rise of AI. Sonically, the bruiser is fueled by wah-and-talk-box-brawny riffage, a 7/4 metal-funk pre-chorus that conjures both Alice in Chains' Dirt classic "Them Bones," and the murky bang behind Cantrell's earliest solo releases, 1998's Boggy Depot and 2002's Degradation Trip. To be fair, that patented gloom wasn't entirely absent on his last record, 2021's Brighten, but that eclectic outing also found Cantrell parting the clouds with moments of pedal-steel-blaring Southern pop-timism. In a sense, I Want Blood taps back into Cantrell's primordially heavy essence, and it quickly turns into an all-out bloodletting.

"On this one I was pretty pure," Cantrell says of an inherently viscous and vicious drive that pushed I Want Blood into "a much more aggressive lane," following the relatively sunny days of Brighten. "I love heavy music, and I love boiled down, minimal music... While I'm not intentionally trying to guide it that way, maybe psychically that's an itch that needs to be scratched every once in a while."

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