Dirt (Alice in Chains Album) - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

With songs written primarily on the road, the material has an overall darker feel than Facelift. "We did a lot of soul searching on this album. There's a lot of intense feelings." Cantrell said, "We deal with our daily demons through music. All of the poison that builds up during the day we cleanse when we play". Themes on the record integrated topics of depression, anti-social behavior, drug use, war, death, entrapment, deep relationships and various other heavy topics. Cantrell stated that the album was the band's best and most intense work, and that they all intentionally for years wanted to make a "brutal" record.

Staley later expressed regret about the lyrical content of some songs on Dirt, explaining, "I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them...I didn't want my fans to think that heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen."

Cantrell said he wrote "Them Bones" about "mortality, that one of these days we'll end up a pile of bones." Cantrell was inspired to write "Dam That River" after a fight he had with Kinney in which Kinney broke a coffee table over his head. "Down in a Hole" was written by Cantrell to his "long-time love" and commented that "it's hard for us to both understand...that this life is not conducive to much success with long-term relationships." "Sickman" came together after Staley asked Cantrell to "write him the sickest tune, the sickest, darkest, most fucked up and heaviest thing could write." "Rooster" was written by Cantrell for his father, who served in the Vietnam War. His nickname was "Rooster". Cantrell described the song as "the start of the healing process between my Dad and I from all that damage that Vietnam caused." Discussing the title track "Dirt", Cantrell stated that "the words Layne put to it were so heavy, I've never given him something and not thought it was gonna be the most bad-assed thing I was going to hear." Cantrell cited "Junkhead" and "God Smack" as "the most openly honest" songs about drug use. "Iron Gland" was developed out of a guitar riff that Cantrell would play that annoyed the other band members, so he created the song (adding in a reference to Black Sabbath's "Iron Man") and promised to never play the guitar riff again. It features Tom Araya of Slayer on vocals. "Hate to Feel" and "Angry Chair" were both composed solely by Staley, and Cantrell has expressed his pride in seeing Staley grow as a songwriter and guitarist. The album's final track, "Would?", was written by Cantrell and concerns the late lead singer of Mother Love Bone, Andrew Wood. Cantrell said the song is also "directed towards people who pass judgments."