After the surprisingly warm and soft Brighten in 2021, Jerry Cantrell returns to what he does best with I Want Blood. The alt-rock pioneer has always experimented with his sound, such as mainly going acoustic on Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies, adding a bit of twang on Degradation Trip, and playing with various vocal harmony techniques throughout his Alice in Chains career. But throughout all that, his most recognizable music carries some core elements — it’s heavy, sludgy, and bleak. All of that is true of I Want Blood, Cantrell’s fourth solo album.
The album opener, “Vilified,” layers Cantrell’s main chugging guitar riff with licks played using a wah pedal and a talk box. Cantrell’s voice ranges from a disaffected drone to beautiful with a sinister tension as he sings of the artificial quality brought by modern technology like AI and data mining. “Simulate the feel of all that’s true and real,” he snarks.
The hard-charging arena rock of the title track is a bit less sludgy. Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin lay down a propulsive rhythm as Cantrell sings in a raspy howl about the fleeting nature of life. “You only rent the crown,” he sings. The song is powerful and focused, hitting with precision and ending with fifteen seconds of feedback.
The dirty blues-rock groove of “Throw Me a Line” strikes a tricky balance and manages to be danceable while also being good for head-banging. “Off the Rails” is I Want Blood’s heaviest track. Cantrell’s start-and-stop power chords hit like a jackhammer as they sync with Gil Sharone’s drums and Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo’s thumping bass.
The album’s greatest achievement, especially for Alice in Chains fans, is “Let It Lie.” The song opens with one of Cantrell’s signatures, a menacing riff of string bends on a down-tuned guitar. The riff has the nastiness of AIC’s “Stone” and “It Ain’t Like That.” Cantrell is enraged as he rails against hatred and political division. “Can you see yourself in the other? Release the need to be so right,” he sings. It’s a bleak alternative song with growling guitars, rock hero soloing, and an air of volatility.
While sludgy, aggressive alt-rock makes up the bulk of the album, it also has some solid lighter moments. In the dirge that is “It Comes,” Cantrell’s haunting voice drifts over an eerie guitar arpeggio. The lyrics are cryptic but have an aura of death. “Not only scars I see. Notes in a symphony, undone,” he sings.
In the murky ballad “Echoes of Laughter,” Cantrell sings about struggling with the loss of a loved one. “I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell. Could be both in the now, baby, it’s hard to tell,” he sings, his mournful voice fleshed out with a harmony by former Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato. “The canyons echo of your laughter in the light of day,” they sing in the chorus.
With an all-star supporting cast and a return to snarling, destructive music, I Want Blood is the best album Jerry Cantrell has released since at least 2002’s Degradation Trip, if not 1995’s eponymous Alice in Chains release. It shows Cantrell continuing to stretch artistically, especially as a singer, while leaning on the musical chops that made him a generation’s guitar hero.
