POP MUSIC REVIEW : Alice in Chains--Ready for Big Arenas?

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the next larger-than-life arena-rock band . . . Alice in Chains.

At least, that was the impression at the Hollywood Palladium on Tuesday. The sights (a room tightly packed with rabid fans for the first of two sold-out nights) and sounds (big big BIG) made a move up to arenas seem inevitable for this Seattle band, which not long ago was still at the club level.

Tuesday’s show started with signs that the hard-rock band itself only viewed this 3,000-capacity hall as a whistle stop on its rise to larger pastures.

As any rock fan knows, that’s rarely good news. And keep in mind that this band is the current standard-bearer for ominous, tortured rock, a style that can achieve critical mass in the pressure cooker of an intimate club, but tends to become cartoonish as it’s pumped up to arena-size.

Right off the bat, there was a showy, boastful introduction of the band, followed by a portentous mix of feedback guitar, pounding drums and flashing lights. In just the kind of affectation you’d expect from some mainstream hack band at the Forum, the band opened from behind a scrim, the lights creating shifting silhouettes as it started to play.

Even when the scrim dropped, it was a bit disconcerting to see singer Layne Staley--once a fidgety, uneasy performer--in a leather jacket and wrap-around shades. He looked as if he’d been jointly possessed by no less calculating showmen than Bono and Perry Farrell.

What next? Flame jets? A drum solo?

Nope. That was it for the grand-scale glitz. Alice didn’t even resort to stage fog to heighten the sense of foreboding it works so hard at creating, and for the rest of the set the quartet delivered a solid, at times seductive slab of its patented Puget Sound sludge.

None of that is likely to sway anyone who has written off the band as a commercial Seattle cash-in. But the demeanor of Staley might.

The singer seems to be on top of his reported struggle with drugs, and his energy and confidence carried the show. What’s more, his clear, purposeful presence cast new light on much of the band’s material.

Such older, pre-recovery songs as “We Die Young” and “Man in a Box” now seemed like victory yowls over death and depression rather than the cathartic submissions to defeat they once seemed to be. And newer songs from the current “Dirt” album plainly, if sometimes awkwardly, chronicle Staley’s personal struggles without diluting the intensity.

The primary drawback evident in the show was that Alice really only does one thing, sonically speaking. What hooks there are exist completely in the mood rather than melodies, which are fairly limited, and Tuesday there was no relief or reprieve from the Gothically dark tones. But Staley’s new sense of life gave it a slightly different spin, opening new options that could serve the band well as it moves on.

Second-billed Screaming Trees, a fellow Seattle band reviewed at length recently, did offer tighter and more propulsive songs, with a mix of Seeds/Stooges aura (good) and Cult-ish moodiness (not so good), delivered with even fewer frills than Alice had, which is a plus in pure aesthetic theory, but a minus in any attempt to give a captivating performance.