Dirt (Alice in Chains Album) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Dirt was the band's breakthrough album. Upon its release in September 1992, Dirt peaked at number six on the Billboard 200. Dirt was released on the same day as another important album of the grunge era, Core by Stone Temple Pilots. Dirt granted Alice in Chains international recognition, and the album was certified four times platinum status in the United States, platinum status in Canada and gold status in the UK. The album had sold 3,358,000 copies in the United States as of 2008.

The album was a critical success and is often considered to be one of the best rock records of the 1990s, with Steve Huey of AllMusic saying "Dirt is Alice in Chains' major artistic statement and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece. It's a primal, sickening howl from the depths of Layne Staley's heroin addiction, and one of the most harrowing concept albums ever recorded. Not every song on Dirt is explicitly about heroin, but Jerry Cantrell's solo-written contributions (nearly half the album) effectively maintain the thematic coherence—nearly every song is imbued with the morbidity, self-disgust, and/or resignation of a self-aware yet powerless addict." Michael Christopher of PopMatters praised the album saying "the record wasn't celebratory by any means -- but you'll be hard pressed to find a more brutally truthful work laid down -- and that's why it will always be one of the greatest records ever made." Chris Gill of Guitar World called Dirt "huge and foreboding, yet eerie and intimate," and "sublimely dark and brutally honest." Don Kaye of Kerrang! described Dirt as "brutally truthful and a fiercely rocking testimonial to human endurance". It was voted "Kerrang! Critic's Choice Album of the Year" for 1992.

In 2011, Joe Robinson of Loudwire named Dirt as one of the best metal albums of the 1990s, alongside other albums such as Megadeth's Rust in Peace and Tool's Ænima, writing "In the battle between metal and grunge, Alice in Chains are a rare band that is embraced by fans of both genres. The most metal of the Seattle bands, they were marketed as metal for 1990's 'Facelift,' then touted as grunge for 1992's 'Dirt.' The band members themselves didn't bother much with labels, they just churned out some of the finest alt-metal with classics like 'Would,' 'Rooster' and 'Them Bones' leading their charge all the way to the headlining spot on Lollapalooza '93."

Dirt is often considered as one of the most influential albums to the sludge metal subgenre which fuses doom metal with hardcore punk.

Dirt included the singles "Would?", "Them Bones", "Angry Chair", "Rooster", and "Down in a Hole", all of which had accompanying music videos. Dirt spawned five top 30 singles, including "Rooster", "Them Bones", and "Down in a Hole", and remained on the charts for nearly a year. At the 1993 Grammy Awards, Dirt received a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band also contributed the song "Would?" to the soundtrack for the 1992 Cameron Crowe film Singles, whose video received an award for Best Video from a Film at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. Dirt was named 5th best album in the last two decades by Close-Up magazine. Dirt was also included in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In October 2011, the album was ranked number one on Guitar World magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1992, with The Offspring's Ignition in second place and Bad Religion's Generator in third place.