Alice In Chains’ self-titled album Alice in Chains stands as the band’s final studio recording with Layne Staley - a stark document of their heaviest, most wounded era. Released in 1995, it bridges the group’s serrated, low-slung guitar attack with slower, murkier tempos and a near-suffocating emotional gravity. The songs lean into a bruised, narcotic mood: gnarled distortion is offset with dissolution-tinted harmonies, stripped-back passages and the uneasy quiet that creeps in between the blowtorch riffs. Rather than attempting catharsis, the record sits inside the wound - a record that flickers between resigned regret, bitter tension and the dull glint of the band’s melodic instincts. It is an album that feels lived-in, not performed. Three decades on, Alice in Chains retains the serrated presence and psychological weight that made it such a singular statement within American rock.