Facelift by Alice In Chains

Facelift, Alice in Chains' debut, came out on Columbia on August 21, 1990, and it rolled in like a thunderhead. Dave Jerden produced it, and the lineup was the original one: Layne Staley on lead vocals, Jerry Cantrell on guitar and vocals, Mike Starr on bass and Sean Kinney on drums.

This isn't punk-scruffy grunge. It's heavy, grinding and metallic, with Cantrell's riffs as thick as tar and Staley's voice twisting around his in harmonies that sound like a warning. "Man in the Box" is the one that did the damage: a lurching, growling monster with a hook that seems to crawl out of the speakers, and a vocal that goes from moan to howl. "We Die Young" is fast and mean, a hammering blast of dread. The whole album has a dark, sickly swagger, as if the band were already staring down something the rest of the scene hadn't noticed yet.

It only peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard 200, but it kept on selling. On September 11, 1991, it became the first grunge album certified gold by the RIAA, and it has since gone triple platinum, with three million copies shipped in the US. "Man in the Box" earned a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal in 1992.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.