Jerry Cantrell wasn't sure how it would feel to record in Seattle again for the first time since the grunge-era.
While Cantrell's band Alice In Chains recorded some of its best-known work in the Pacific Northwest, the guitarist has selected other locales for more recent albums...until this past winter.
He described in an interview with Metal Hammer the initial unease he felt when Alice In Chains returned to Seattle to record its upcoming album, Rainier Fog, at the same studio where the band crafted its 1995 self-titled record.
"We were wondering if those ghosts would be there when we rolled in, but a lot of years have passed; we're a totally different unit in a different space, and it never came up," he said."
"Leave it at the door and go to work," Cantrell continued. "It was much more of a good feeling being home, recording in our hometown and reconnecting with where we came from."
For someone like Cantrell, who was firmly entrenched in the grunge movement of the '90s, looking back at that time results in a rush of emotions. He describes the grunge boom as "incredible and terrifying at the same time."
He said Alice In Chains, like many of their contemporaries, went from being a local band to being a national act, "part of a moment." But beyond the whirlwind of the sudden success so many artists enjoyed, there are the memories of so many fixtures of the movement who died young.
"I get emotional about it because of how much time has passed, how many of us are not here anymore, but also how potent that music was and it still lives — that was the whole goal," he said.
Rainier Fog is due out August 24.
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