Alice In Chains – Sap

This is being released on vinyl for the first time on Record Store Day Black Friday (11/27/2020). Limited to 8500 copies with a special etching on Side B of their logo.

As much as I love Alice in Chains's full-length albums, I think their EP releases are the best evidence of the band's versatility, talent, and soul. Case in point is the 1992 EP Sap. Coming after the unrelentingly heavy Facelift (and before the equally heavy Dirt), this brief collection of mostly laid back material was not what I was expecting.

The EP kicks off with the almost acoustic song "Brother". It's very mellow, but as gloomy as anything Alice in Chains has ever written. Next is "Got Me Wrong", one of my favorite AIC songs and one that is a nice, melodic counterpart to Dirt's "Would". The next song - "Right Turn" - is a grunge fan's dream with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell trading lines with Layne Stayley. It's beautiful and depressing at the same time. The disc's supposedly final track - "Am I Inside" - is an utterly depressing almost acoustic song. It is followed by a bizarre untitled track that sounds like something off of Faith No More's Angel Dust album. It's a frenzied, mood shattering way to end things.

If you're an Alice in Chains fan, you need to own Sap. It bridges the gap between two of their best full-length albums, and is more impressive with just 5 songs than full albums from many other 90's bands.

I'm only a casual Alice in Chains fan, but I've heard all of their stuff, and this is my favourite. All their studio albums sound the same to me: the first three, the Jerry Cantrell solo album, and even the comeback from a couple years ago -- all the same churning grunge quasi-metal. Not bad stuff by any means, but there's little variation.

By contrast, this EP (and to a slightly lesser extent, Jar of Flies, which is good, but which I found a little too emotionally heavy) demonstrate a respectable range of songwriting and performance capability. Cantrell's gift for melody is firing on all cylinders here, and the band moves effectively from acoustic, bluesy ages to dynamic rock. The surprising addition of Ann Wilson is just great.

As someone who was not a big fan of the overblown grunge/alternative movement of the early-90s, I think Sap is their finest moment and most enjoyable outing. There were so many lousy bands and records that came out of that time, many of them just following what other bands did. It's nice to look back, weed through the blandness, and come away with a work that stands up 20 years later.