Sleze switched their name to Alice N Chains in 1986, roughly a year prior to Staley's introduction to Cantrell at a party at the rehearsal space called the Music Bank. The roots of Alice in Chains lay in Sleze, a Seattle-based hair metal band that featured Layne Staley as lead singer. Four years later, Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Inez revived Alice in Chains with singer William DuVall, sparking an extended second life of recording and touring that has lasted longer than their original incarnation. His abuse slowed the band's upward trajectory in the back half of the '90s, a descent culminating in the singer's accidental death in 2002. After the group scored rock radio and MTV hits with "Man in the Box" and "Would?" in the early days of grunge, Alice in Chains became one of the first alt-rock bands of the '90s to delve into acoustic-based music, scoring hits with the comparatively softer "No Excuses" and "I Stay Away." Despite its success, the band was plagued with internal tensions during its commercial peak, much of it stemming from Staley's drug addictions. Cantrell's gloomy, minor-key riffs were an ideal match for Staley's tortured lyrics, creating a sound that felt as heavy as their Seattle cohorts but also was slightly slicker and ready for radio. The band's sensibility fit into the alternative rock zeitgeist of the early '90s. Despite their connections to metal, Alice in Chains thrived in the glory days of grunge, and it wasn't merely a question of timing, either. Guitarist Jerry Cantrell and vocalist Layne Staley both played in metal bands prior to the formation of Alice in Chains in 1987 and they released the band's debut, Facelift, in 1990, well before Nirvana's Nevermind pushed the underground into the mainstream. What separated Alice in Chains from their alt-rock brethren was how their roots lay in heavy metal, not punk. Alice in Chains both epitomized the solemn, heavy Seattle sound of the 1990s and stood apart from the grunge hordes.
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