Alice in Chains' debut album, mostly written by Jerry Cantrell and well written it is. Jerry Cantrell and Mike Starr add a crunching metal aspect to the wailing vocals of lead singer Layne Staley for an amazing sound. Layne Staley's lyrics are very well written, making the beautiful shredding of Cantrell sound very ominous.

Delving deep into the subjects of death, substance abuse, and demented love, the words to the beautifully composed songs stick in your head and make you wonder. From the almost jazz/metal of "Sea of Sorrow" to the slowed down foreboding sound of "Love, Hate, Love" to the straight out heavy rock of "Confusion" this album is very rounded out.

During this time in Rock history (1990) most of the new grunge bands from Seattle were getting play on radio and MTV, but putting out more quantity than quality. Alice in Chains defined the sound of grunge/metal with this CD and their EP before it "We Die Young," but maintained such an excellent degree of quality that I hate to put this in the same genre as the flat voiced Nirvana of yore.