Jerry Fulton Cantrell Jr. (born March 18, 1966) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known as the founder, lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and main songwriter of rock band Alice in Chains. The band rose to international fame in the early 1990s during Seattle’s grunge movement, and is known for its distinctive vocal style and the harmonized vocals between Cantrell and Layne Staley (and later Cantrell and William DuVall). With their 1990 debut Facelift, the quartet scored a surprise hit with the ultra-heavy “Man in the Box.” Racking up hit albums like 1992’s Dirt and 1995’s self-titled release, the band rose to the top of the alterna-metal heap. Cantrell started to sing lead vocals on Alice in Chains’ 1992 EP Sap.
Over the course of their career, the group has issued two successful all-acoustic EPs and one unplugged album, which focused primarily on the songwriting and arranging talents of Cantrell, whom fans found out had a very strong voice to boot. With the future of the band up in the air, Cantrell appeared as a solo artist on the soundtrack for the movie The Cable Guy, contributing the track “Leave Me Alone.”
After AiC opened for the first Kiss reunion show in Detroit in 1996, Cantrell began work on his very first solo album. He enlisted Alice drummer Sean Kinney and a revolving series of bassists — including Alice’s Mike Inez, Les Claypool, Fishbone’s Norwood Fisher and Pantera’s Rex — and set out to record Boggy Depot with producer Toby Wright, who had previously worked with Alice in Chains and the Nixons. The record was finished by the end of the year and was released in the spring of 1998 to generally positive reviews. He supported the album as Van Halen’s opening act on their summer 1998 tour. A long silence followed after his touring as he helped on a few Alice in Chains releases, including a box set and a greatest hits.
He stepped back into the studio to record his second album, this time for Roadrunner Records, in the fall of 2001. He worked with Ozzy Osbourne’s touring band on the album, which saw him trying to avoid guest appearances despite the high profile friends he could have counted on. Right before the album was ready to drop in 2002, tragedy struck as Layne Staley’s body was found dead in his apartment. The remaining members of Alice in Chains went to a vigil in a Seattle park and released a mournful statement, but the incident did not stop Cantrell from pushing forward and releasing Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2 in 2002.
After Staley’s death in 2002, Cantrell took the role of Alice in Chains’ lead singer on most of the songs from the band’s post-Staley albums, Black Gives Way to Blue (2009), The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013) and Rainier Fog (2018), with DuVall harmonizing with him in the new songs and singing Staley’s vocals in the old songs in live concerts.
His third solo album, Brighten released on October 29, 2021. Cantrell has also collaborated and performed with Heart, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Pantera, Circus of Power, Metal Church, Gov’t Mule, Damageplan, Pearl Jam, The Cult, Stone Temple Pilots, Danzig, Glenn Hughes, Duff McKagan and Deftones, among others.
His brand new record is I Want Blood, out October 18, 2024. The new advance song is “Villified.” I Want Blood is the follow-up to Cantrell’s 2021 album, Brighten. The new LP is stacked with notable contributors, including bassists Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses) and Robert Trujillo (Metallica); drummers Mike Bordin (Faith No More) and Gil Sharone (Team Sleep, Stolen Babies); and backing vocals by Greg Puciato (Better Lovers, ex-Dillinger Escape Plan) and Lola Colette. “This record is a serious piece of work. It’s a motherf**ker,” Cantrell stated about I Want Blood. “It’s hard, no doubt, and completely unlike Brighten. And that’s what you want, to end up in a different place. There’s a confidence to this album. I think it’s some of my best songwriting and playing, and certainly some of my best singing. Sonically, the single “Vilified’ falls right in the Alice in Chains wheelhouse, and features Trujillo on bass and Sharone on drums. “’Vilified’ travels a lot of places in just four and a half minutes,” Cantrell said of the song. “It’s got a ferocity and really aggressive vibe to it.”
REF: AllMusic and Wiki
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