SPILL FEATURE: I WANT BLOOD – A CONVERSATION WITH JERRY CANTRELL

I WANT BLOOD

A CONVERSATION WITH JERRY CANTRELL

Last October, Alice In Chains guitarist, singer, and songwriter Jerry Cantrell released I Want Blood, his fifth solo album and his second in three years, following 2021’s Brighten.  Led by singles “Vilified”, “Afterglow”, and “I Want Blood”, Cantrell displayed a level of relentless heaviness alongside melancholic melodicism in a manner that expanded the artistry of his solo career. To celebrate, Cantrell is embarking on a headlining North American tour with support from Filter. The I Want Blood North American Tour kicks off on January 31, at Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, ON. Speaking on this, Cantrell gives a peek behind the curtain to the making of I Want Blood and his creative process.

“I’m really happy with how that turned out” Cantrell tells me. He continues, “It’s always an adventure that you set yourself on; you don’t really have a direction mapped out in your head… I’m always surprised where I end up. Hopefully you’re going someplace you haven’t gone before.” Throughout our conversation, Cantrell would return to this idea, each time providing a greater level of elaboration to his approach to songwriting. Between his most recent albums, Cantrell has seen a resurgence in his solo career following nearly two decades between Degradation Trip and Brighten. Cantrell reflects on his return as a solo artist, stating, “I felt like I wanted to have that experience again, so I jumped into it with Tyler Bates and the fine musicians who put together the Brighten experience and went out and toured it. I had a lot of fun doing it; it was inspiring and invigorating… When we wrapped that cycle, I got right into writing again. We didn’t really have anything on the books with Alice, as far as a record or tour cycle, so I thought I’d just jump in and do another one real quick. As a result, I Want Blood stands as one of Cantrell’s heaviest solo records, striking an immediate contrast to the sonic pallet of Brighten. Cantrell states that Alice In Chains “widened the play field” almost immediately when they followed Facelift, their debut album, with 1992’s Sap. He further continues, “I don’t think you can really say that any Alice record sounds like another Alice record, and I think you can use that same standard to my own. I’m not trying to repeat myself… I think I carry that ethos with me wherever I go.”

I Want Blood was predominantly through the end of 2023 heading into 2024. As Cantrell tells, “Whether I’m working on a record for myself or focused on writing material for an Alice record, it generally takes me 3 or 4 months. I don’t know what starts it, but I know when it begins. I commit myself for a few months and start writing. After a period of time, you start to have a body of work. In the first month or two, you get a pretty good signpost of where it wants to go. You just put your finger in the air, see what way the wind’s blowing, and follow it.” Here, Cantrell creates a distinction between consciously writing material and writing riffs and jamming on ideas, allowing for him to amass a collection of riffs, “This record was a pretty standard operating procedure for me; they’re riffs I’ve collected over the last couple of years from the Brighten period of dressing rooms and soundchecks and hotel rooms and sitting on the couch at home. Its like money in the bank to me… I put those riffs in the bank and down the road, somewhere I’m gonna extract that and put that into something.” In addition to this and a desire to continue traveling through new musical territory, Cantrell actively challenges himself musically, stating “In the writing and recording of this, I felt like I was operating beyond my abilities in a lot of respects, as a singer, as a guitar player, as a writer, and as a producer.” He adds, “I felt like I was challenging myself to hit some marks that I didn’t know if I was able to hit confidently. It’s always nice to put yourself in an uncomfortable position to see if you can fucking do it. That’s a good space to create it; it makes you reach for things that aren’t safe.”

I WANT BLOOD ALBUM REVIEW

On the surface, I Want Blood may seem like a true to form collection of music from Cantrell, but it stands to be much more subversive than that as he plays with structure, tone, and transitions. The nuances beneath the crunching riffs and the longing melancholy are truly sublime. Additionally, Cantrell’s performance is one of the best deliveries in his career. Alongside him are contributions from a range of artists, including Duff McKagan, Robert Trujillo, and Greg Puciato among others. Cantrell comments, “These are musicians I admire, they’re good friends of mine, and they’ve got some pretty good day jobs – they’re all a part of some pretty badass bands.” Despite being a solo album, the influence of these artists is undeniable, “even if they follow the blueprint to a tee, it’s gonna be different just ‘cause of the people I’m playing with.” One of the greatest moments of collaboration on I Want Blood comes in the shape of “Echoes Of Laughter”. The hard-hitting, melancholic ballad sees Cantrell co-write with Tyler Bates, as Cantrell describes, “he was still very involved, especially as a sounding board… He kept playing this guitar figure, and it kept resurfacing, so we plugged him in and recorded the guitar. I just sort of started free form singing the chorus and the lyrics came out just as they are. That chorus came out, the melody and lyrics in one shot, which is a rarity for me.” Reflecting on the heaviness of the ballad, Cantrell adds, “You don’t have to have tempo and distortion to be heavy. Some of the heaviest songs Alice ever wrote were two chord ballads – like ‘Nutshell’, that’s fucking heavy. That hits just as hard as ‘Them Bones’, or ‘We Die Young’, or ‘Man In The Box’.” While Cantrell lists classic works from Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Pink Floyd as influences, along with his collaborators, he also finds inspiration through cinema. Citing Quentin Tarantino, The Cohen Brothers, and Oliver Stone as influences, he also found lyrical inspiration for “Off The Rails” when watching Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon, “Scorsese knocked me out of a writer’s block… On the second verse, I had a good start, and I just hit a fucking wall… I went to see Killers of The Flower Moon and there was this scene that oddly fit with the subject matter of the song – even though its not about that movie at all… seeing that movie that night got me out of my writers block.”

With the I Want Blood North American Tour kicking off at the end of the month, Cantrell will open his tour with a lone Canadian date in Niagara Falls before trekking across America until mid-March. “It’s always fun trying to figure out what you’re going to play for a setlist, and they change, and you mold them as you go… I’m trying to serve not only the new offering, but you want to serve all the other ones too.” Laughing, Cantrell continues, “I’m gonna do a novel thing, I’m gonna play songs that I’ve written.”

Listen to the full, unabridged conversation, including Cantrell’s reflections on classic Alice In Chains songs, his approach to guitar solos, and his desert island records, on episode 38 of Beats By Ger on Spotify and YouTube.

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Main Photo Credit: Darren Craig