Degradation Trip
| Degradation Trip | ||||
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| Studio album by Jerry Cantrell | ||||
| Released | June 18, 2002 | |||
| Recorded | Fall 2001 at A&M Studios in Hollywood, CA; Master Control in Burbank, CA; Music Grinder Studios in West Hollywood, CA | |||
| Genre | Alternative metal, grunge, alternative rock, heavy metal | |||
| Length | 70:56 | |||
| Label | Roadrunner | |||
| Producer | Jerry Cantrell & Jeff Tomei | |||
| Jerry Cantrell chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Degradation Trip | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| CANOE | favourable |
| Entertainment Weekly | B+ |
| ultimateguitar.com | 9.8/10 |
Degradation Trip is the second and to date, final solo album by Alice in Chains guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell, released on June 18, 2002. It marks his difficult transition from Columbia Records to Roadrunner and was dedicated to Alice in Chains lead singer Layne Staley, who died two months before the album's release. Degradation Trip featured two singles and was well received by critics, faring better than Cantrell's solo debut and bearing stronger resemblance to his work in Alice in Chains.
The album was the result of an intense writing process that resulted in 25 songs. Cantrell enlisted new band mates to officially dissociate himself from the incapacitated Alice in Chains and, after being dropped from Columbia, faced a turbulent recording process funded entirely by himself. After a lack of label interest, Cantrell eventually acquired a deal with Roadrunner who requested that he condense the material to 14 tracks. On November 26, 2002, the full Degradation Trip sessions' songs were released in their entirety as Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2.
Not long after the April 1998 release of Cantrell's solo debut, Boggy Depot, he began work on a sophomore record which he confidently projected for a mid-'99 release. The majority of this follow-up, later entitled Degradation Trip, was written in the seclusion of a house in the Cascade Mountains. In a state of self-imposed isolation Cantrell recorded the demos using a four-track recorder and a battered Gibson Les Paul. In 2002, he detailed the experience of writing the album and its outcome:
Amidst writing a surplus of material between fall 1998 and spring '99, Cantrell showed two of his new songs to Alice in Chains' lead singer Layne Staley, who had been living in seclusion for some time prior and had not worked with Cantrell in some time. Staley contributed to the songs which would become "Get Born Again," a single from Nothing Safe: Best of the Box, and the song "Died". Thus, rather than becoming Cantrell's solo work, this led to their recording by Alice in Chains in 1998, release the following year, and the esteem of being what would years later be recognized as the final material written by the band with Staley.
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Wikipedia