These Beasts‘ cover of Alice In Chains‘ “Sickman” can be heard below. Their rendition features a guest spot from Pelican guitarist Dallas Thomas and will appear on Magnetic Eye Records‘ upcoming tribute to Alice In Chains‘ 4x multi-platinum sophomore album, “Dirt“.
Titled “Dirt [Redux]“, that outing will feature covers done by the likes of Khemmis, Thou and more, It will be out on September 18th. with pre-orders available here. had the following to say of their contribution:
“We have never really played a cover song as a band in the first place, much less recorded one to go an album. So listening to what might be one of Alice in Chains‘ most unconventional songs musically, ‘Sickman,’ at first we were a bit apprehensive, and we spent a couple of months just talking about how we should approach it before we even started learning it. We are proud of what we came up with to keep it sounding like These Beasts while still being able to deliver a version that hardcore Alice in Chains fans might enjoy.
‘Dirt‘ came out when I was a kid. I was really into ‘Facelift‘ and ‘Dirt‘ when they came out and enjoyed some Alice in Chains stuff after those albums, but I didn’t really keep up with them. Fast forward to new Alice in Chains and I really like what they are doing.
As a guitar player, I have always respected and admired what Jerry Cantrell has been doing. He is a great guitarist, much more than I am and that is the reason is why I asked my friend Dallas Thomas (Pelican, The Swan King, Asschapel), another guitar player who’s playing I admire, to come in and play some leads on the recording. He blasted out within a couple of hours what would have taken me days or weeks to figure out.
Going back to ‘Dirt‘ though, it had been many years since I had put on the album. So, as a band, we started taking in the whole album again. I didn’t realize as a kid how dark Layne‘s lyrics really were and after spending a lot of time digging into ‘Sickman‘ it did occasionally get me in a weird headspace sometimes trying to interpret those lyrics over and over in my head.”
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