Alice in Chains ‘A Looking in View’ — VIDEO
Alice in Chains are providing fans with a little taste of their forthcoming album. After the jump is the video for "A Looking In View," a seven-minute-long song taken from 'Black Gives Way to Blue,' the band's first album since the death of frontman Layne Staley, which is slated for commercial release on September 29.
Directed by Stephen Schuster, the video for the hard-hitting track is story-based, meaning we don't actually catch a single glimpse of the reformed band in performance sequences. Instead, the clip revolves around three very different individuals, who are all living in the same apartment complex. Each has his or her own personal demon they're attempting to deal with. Like previous AIC videos, this one is dark, yet visually stunning, and tackles taboo subject matter, like childhood abuse and moral indifference. It's also one of the first videos we've seen with nudity, which means this clip is not exactly safe for workplace environments. Check it out after the jump, folks.
"A Looking In View" will not be the album's first single, according to guitarist and singer Jerry Cantrell. Why? Well, for starters, its seven minutes long. But that hasn't stopped rock stations across the country from spinning the brutal track.
"We thought it would be funny," explains drummer Sean Kinney. "In a world where they play the same ten songs and they have to be three-minutes-and-thirty-seconds-long, we thought, 'Well, here's a seven-minute song and you can play it if you want.' We didn't supply it to anyone, so they must be downloading it and playing it that way."
Cantrell laughs, before going on about the irony of the song's title. "It just happened to be that that was the song we felt might be the best to kind of throw out there, and give people something to chew on before the record, because we're still a couple of months away from that. The single will probably come before that, but its funny because, the song is called 'A Looking in View,' so its sort of like a peak at a slice of the record, and its something we figured out later. Not intentional. Just a happy coincidence, but cool."
While unexpectedly heavy for the band, the song is Alice in Chains from first note to last. There's Jerry Cantrell's signature guitar trickery and voice, with Kinney's tight drum work, and Mike Inez's thick bass lines, but not all of the songs on the disc will sound like "A Looking In View."
"There are ten other songs, and none of them sound like that one, but there are elements from that song, probably, throughout the record," Cantrell says. "There's some heavy s--- on that record, without a doubt. But there's also some more subtle, dark stuff done in a beautiful way. We've been pretty fortunate throughout our career of making music of not really repeating ourselves, but also creating something that's at least recognizable, so, as different as any record we put out before was, this one is more so, obviously, because the dynamic has changed. But there's a lot of variety on that record without making people stretch too far and getting lost."
Alice in Chains will be playing a show in Detroit on July 18 with Kid Rock, and then, will head overseas for various festivals in August. On August 22, they'll return to join Tool and Linkin Park for the first-ever Epicenter show at the Fairplex in Pomona, Calif., and will kick off a headlining tour September 4 in Washington, DC. Dates run through September 28 in San Francisco. The band have no touring plans after that. So what's going to happen?
"After that, we'll probably repeat the past and not ever play again," Kinney jokes. "It worked for us before."