Jerry Cantrell

The Alice In Chains guitarist on his forthcoming album and its guests, songwriting, AT, algorithm bots, AIC’s legacy...

- Paul Brannigan

Jerry Cantrell’s new solo album, I Want Blood, has an impressive cast of contributing guest musicians - Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin among them - but from the moment you hear the driving riffs and eerie harmonies of opening track and lead-off single Vilified it could be only be the work of Alice In Chains’ redoubtable leader Cantrell.

Pre-release, we caught up with the 58-year-old during the opening week of his summer tour with Bush, and found the grunge veteran “pumped and ready to go”.

I Want Blood takes its title from the most aggressive song on the record, which seems like a statement of intent. What does the title track mean to you?

The title is very potent, so I get that reaction. To me, the whole record has a lot of weight to it, and I’m still taking it in myself. You can take that title a lot of ways, like ‘I want to fight’ or ‘I want to kill’, but it’s not really about that. I’ll leave it open to interpretation, but to me it’s kind of a celebration, an embrace of life, and the feeling of being alive, wanting to experience all you can.

There’s a punk-rock energy to that track. People know that you grew up on Zeppelin and Sabbath and Pink Floyd, but did punk mean much to you as a kid?

I was always more aligned with hard rock, metal and classic rock, but yeah, I like a lot of punk too, the energy of that, and the rawness, and I think there’s elements of that in my music as well. But you’re right, that’s about as clear a strike on that bell as I’ve made in a while. It never hurts when you’ve got Duff McKagan playing bass to set that tone.

You mentioned Duff McKagan. You two have been playing on one another’s records for more than thirty years now, since you guested on Believe In Me, his first solo record, back in 1993. How did you first meet?