"In the darkest hole you'd be well-advised not to plan my funeral before the body dies." The first lines of Alice in Chains self-titled third album could be an admonition by Layne Stayley to the press, in light of all the coverage his heroin habit has gotten recently. But if you listen to the voices on Alice in Chains(Columbia), they sound more like a resignation -- a plea for the simple courtesy of letting him expire in peace. Listening to Alice in Chains has become an increasingly morbid pursuit of late, with every autumnal, baroque harmony tinged by reports of Stayley's real-life demise. The lack of a tour only adds to the speculation that Stayley is no longer functional. It's sorta like watching The Decline of Western Civilization Part II, where it's so painfully obvious that the narcissistic myths and clichés of heavy metal have taken on a very real terror in the corruption (bodily, if not entirely musically) of its players, right down to the dull look in the eyes of that three-legged dog on the cover. Alice in Chains isn't the band's best work by any stretch of the imagination (on the single, "Heaven Beside You," they imitate Candlebox imitating Alice in Chains); but so much of alternative music is geared toward "being on the edge" that it's damn near impossible not to become fixated on Alice in Chains as they slip ever closer to the abyss.

-- Carly Carioli