Music Bank

by

Alice in Chains

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This boxed set is amazing, first off 3 discs featuring the best of all 5 of Alice In Chains Albums (disc1 Facelift and Sap disc2 Dirt, Jar of Flies disc3 Alice In Chains), along with lots of unreleased demos before anyone heard of Alice (demos sound like Guns N' Roses). There are even three acoustic versions of songs (disc3 MTV Unplugged). These CDs are packed with 80 minutes of music each, so its well worth the price, all the hits like Would, Got Me Wrong and dozens more. Also the jams like Toad, and Bleed the Freak are in the set. Next if the fourth disc, a CD-ROM for your MAC or PC, includes full screen videos of Born Again, I Stay Away, Love Hate Love, Man In The Box, No Excuses, and 3 more. Also on the disc are five video interviews, and countless radio interviews answering questions of callers like why they are called Alice In Chains. Finally on the disc is an interactive game to save the Goat Doll. Its stupidly fun, and you navigate with your mouse through the game. Finally there is a very thick book that comes in the bank and goes through the band's history in photos and brief statements. ...

Don't get me wrong, I love Alice in Chains and most of their songs, but this box set is a bit expensive for who it's aimed for.

Now, some of the reviews here are by stupid people who think this was supposed to have all the original albums included in the box set, hence, it has "missing" songs. But this isn't an all-in-one album box set. This is actually a glorified "Best of Alice in Chains" box set that includes previously unreleased material.

What bothers me is that the diehard fan already has the vast majority of the songs. I'll admit their albums have some filler songs, especially Facelift, but they're all worth buying. If you need a chronological list: Facelift, Sap, Dirt, Jar of Flies, self-titled (Tripod) and Unplugged.

From around 50 tracks, only 16 of them were new to me, including the two "remixes" of their songs from the Last Action Hero soundtrack (I like the original A Litter Bitter better). I haven't heard the Best of the Box CD, but it doesn't have a live version of Rooster on it, but a cool demo of it. The fourth disc, a CD-ROM, has an interactive program on it that was released with some versions of Jar of Flies as well as a bizarre adventure game set to AiC music that's interesting at best, but I've only played it once or twice when I first bought the set.

New material:

Get Born Again

I Can't Have You Blues (demo)

Whatcha Gonna Do (demo)

Social Parasite (demo)

Queen of the Rodeo (live)

Bleed The Freak (demo)

Killing Yourself (demo)

Sea of Sorrow (demo)

Rooster (demo)

Fear The Voices

Junkhead (demo)

Lying Season (demo)

What The Hell Have I (remix)

A Little Bitter (remix)

Again (remix)

Died

Of the new material, I like Get Born Again and several of the demos the best. I could've lived without ever hearing half of these. The best (new) thing about the box set is the 3/8" thick booklet by singer/guitarist/songwriter Jerry Cantrell with some history of the band and commentary on most of the songs in the set.

Ultimately, I just let this set sit on a shelf without ever opening it again after the first few listens and preferred the original albums over it. A few years later, I've only recently opened it up again to put the songs exclusive to it on my iPod.