Their third with vocalist William DuVall, who replaced original vocalist and grunge icon Layne Staley (who passed in 2002 after a long battle with drug addiction), Rainier Fog is filled with the band’s trademark gloomy sense of melodies.

Backed with economical arrangements that never waiver from that Alice in Chains’ “feel”, the album offers up some of the best harmonization that the band has offered in a long while. As always, vocalist-guitarist and main songwriter Jerry Cantrell plays a key role here. His guitar-shredding, heavy riffs are easy to latch onto, while his vocals sustain that old school Alice in Chains nuance with beautiful yet brooding ambience against DuVall’s more traditional lead vocalist timbre.

Often underappreciated, especially in the early days when Staley’s haunting (or haunted) vocals were up front, it’s easy to take Cantrell for granted. But as he takes a more leading role since the band’s resurrection with DuVall, it becomes even clearer just how much Cantrell’s voice and role was the central component to the band’s music from early on. It gave the band’s heavy metallic grunge its feeling of estrangement and discomfort, empathizing with all those 1990s disenfranchised teens back in the day.

While Staley’s more dramatic feel of desperation and childlike bewilderment and searching was perhaps easier to outwardly latch onto, Cantrell’s voice (and lyrics) grounded those songs with alternating glimmers of knowing gloom and hope. Even in his 20s in the 1990s, Cantrell sounded weary, life experienced, but content to live through it all.

That Cantrell element plays a central role in Rainier Fog. Underneath all the Alice in Chains aesthetic of this album, his is the voice of hindsight. The sense of recollecting permeates these songs.

The first single, “The One You Know”, is a good example of this. Trudging with a staccato, almost dissonant riff that moves onto an immediately memorable chorus of “Tell me, does it matter/If I’m still here, or I’m gone?/Shifting to the after/An impostor, I’m not the one you know”. Those lyrics may not spell out exactly what it’s about, but they evoke emotion easily.

Delivered with beautiful harmonies between DuVall and Cantrell, the song manages to take all the classic Alice in Chains elements (sludgy verses into melodic choruses into trippy middle-eights and metal solos) and keep them fresh.

One of the reasons all of those things still work is in how the band has restructured its overlaying element. Instead of the old days when verses would be taken by either Staley or Cantrell before moving onto harmonies in the chorus, the “new” Alice in Chains utilizes harmonies as its leading voice. This not only saves the band from the trap so many older acts fall into, which is trying to replace one signature element with another (in this case Staley with DuVall, which never would have worked), but also shuffles the placing of a familiar element into more leading territory.

This gives tracks like “The One You Know” and the standout “All I Am” a sense of immediate depth that is persistent. Even with one of the more complex arrangements in the album — a touch of psychedelic pop and progressive rock can be traced — “All I Am” keeps our attention onto its vocal lines, lending its lyrics additional poignancy.

This poignancy works even with the more upbeat tracks. “Never Fade” nods to the glam metal elements of Alice in Chains’ very early pre-grunge days. Drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Inez keep things moving with their understated playing, which pushes and pulls these songs into various dynamics. The title track engages in the same manner, though with a more direct attack and less melodic turns.

When the band does go for nostalgia, they delve deep into its darkest paths. “So Far Under” moves with the weight of a mammoth, sludge metal riffs and howling desperation in its vocals.

“Red Giant” moves as slowly, with those eerie harmonies up front, slightly whispered and constantly menacing. Here, McKinney shows just how much he adds to the sound, laying down foundational rhythms that are deceptively simple but lead the songs’ dynamics.

Stacked with catchy rock songs that retain that old school Alice in Chains spirit while adding new energy, Rainier Fog is the best out of the three DuVall-era records the band has released. This has a lot to do with the quality of the songwriting, but also the smart way the band has navigated their elder statesmen or new vocalist status. If you’re planning on picking up one mainstream rock record this year, Rainer Fog should definitely be in the running.

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