Alice returns; new singer’s a bit chained

Coming back from oblivion is never easy, especially for a rock band whose singer was lost first to addiction, then death. The survivors of Alice in Chains waited 10 years before reconvening with a new singer for a five-city U.S. club tour, and they resurrected the band’s metallic grunge for a packed room Thursday at the Roxy.

The Alice sound has aged better than anyone should have expected -- a fluid grinding, riffing and pounding, as drummer Sean Kinney attacked his kit Thursday with genuine fury. Alice was not the greatest band of its era, or even of the ‘90s grunge movement, but it no longer has to suffer comparisons to Nirvana and Soundgarden.

As always, the radio hits outclassed the lesser-known tunes. Fortunately, Alice has many of them. Filling in for Layne Staley (who died in 2002) was singer William DuVall, who was wisely not trying to be a clone of Staley. DuVall had his own energy and possibility but couldn’t exactly make his own mark in a set of old tunes that essentially required him to approximate Staley’s originals. With no new material to claim as his own, he made a positive but uncertain first impression. There were the inevitable special guests: Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan singing the grim and languid “Down in a Hole,” Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age) adding sandpaper vocals to “Rooster.” And Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver) played guitar for about half of the 75-minute set.

But for a sweaty crowd of hard-core fans, local friends and industry guests, the event of the Alice reunion itself was more reason to celebrate; at one point onlookers chanted “Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” as guitarist Jerry Cantrell and bassist Mike Inez thrashed and banged their heads at the front of the stage as if the band had never stopped. Alice in Chains proved it could still deliver on its original sound and purpose, without exactly revealing what might come next.