Getting Prehistoric with "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here"

Alice in Chains (not to be confused with the adult moviestar and scene girl, Allison Chainzzz) has returned with their second AL (Anno Layno/After Layne) album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.  Longtime fans of the band have always been very outspoken against replacement singer William Duvall after singer Layne Staley's untimely death in 2002.  They asked questions like, "will he try to sound like Layne?" and statements like, "it's not Alice without Layne."  Sure, I agree it's not truly AIC without Staley, but you can't restrict Jerry Cantrell and co. from continuing to make music under the original name they made for themselves.  Would Layne want the show to go on?  Most likely.  Would he want them to make an album about dinosaurs?  Debatable.  Maybe not.  Actually definitely not.  Actually why the fuck is a band who has an album cover with a girl lying in dirty, dried mud now coming out with an album cover with a triceratops skull on it?  

Mr. Maxell, 4th cousin to Mr. Facelift

Before we get all prehistoric, let's take a look at AIC's past releases.  Their debut, Facelift, depicts a highly saturated dude in primary colors with his face getting...uh...lifted.  I like to imagine him being distantly related to Maxell's "Blown Away" guy, aside from the fact that Mr. Facelift can't take a pounding of music to the face like he can.

1992 saw the aforementioned Dirt, Alice's most prominent album to date.  Within their first two years, Alice in Chains had released two albums that were not only musically advanced, but showed some pretty disturbing images sure to disrupt your perusing the cassette aisle at The Wiz (Nobody Beats the Wiz).  

Bands from the 90's are notorious for adding shock-value to their album art (i.e. Black Crowes' pubey Amorica, Tool's contortionist-blowing-himself Ænema) and fans were typically pretty receptive to them.  

Then AIC came out with their self-titled Alice in Chains depicting a sad three-legged dog, and rather than making you go, "Alice in Chains is so freakin' badass with these dark album covers!" you say, "awww why'd they have to do that?"  And thus dawns the age of ambiguous Alice in Chains album covers.

Alice in Chains roared back into mainstream rock with 2009's Black Gives Way to Blue showing a depleted heart from what looks to be your high school anatomy textbook on a chalky black background.  At the time of its release, Jerry spoke about the meaning behind the album cover and name and how it represented their reincarnation from despair, sort of like a reversed "Hey Hey, My My" ('Out of the blue and into the black').  Cool, Jerry, totally get that.  But then what the hell are you doing talking about dinosaurs now?  Supposedly, it has to do with some type of super religious blah blah blah bullshit.  Since Jurassic Park 2 [BEGIN DINOSAUR RANT], it hasn't been cool to be down with dinosaurs if you're over the age of eight.  Dinosaurs are supposed to be badass, now they're just popular kids cartoons (see Dinosaur Train).

Cartoon dinosaurs weren't always lovingly cute and stuffed-animalized –– they used to have serious concerns like, "shit, my mom is battling a dinosaur named 'Sharptooth' right now and is going to die, this sucks," (RIP Littlefoot's Mother).  Now their biggest concern is, "what tropical location should I ride the Dino Train to today?"  And Jerry, picking a triceratops for your band's album cover called The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here?  Do you really think the devil was the one who put herbivores here?  If he was, then he must be a vegetarian because no meat-lovin' devil is going to put a herbivore here.  And if that's the case, the last thing I want is a vegetarian Satan telling me how he's a vegetarian.  That's a hell not even hateful AIC fans would wish upon William Duvall.