ALICE IN CHAINS “Dirt” Columbia *...

ALICE IN CHAINS “Dirt” Columbia * 1/2

Hear them sneer. Hear them moan. Hear them try to sound like Nirvana or Mother Love Bone or something, but come out closer to Kansas. Alice in Chains is a triumph of marketing, an ordinary, commercial hard-rock band tricked out as one of those grungy ex-Subpopista units that are making a noise right now, but without that pesky anarchist edge. Hear singer Layne Staley yelp; oh, feel his pain.

On this album, which doesn’t even have the benefit of the slightly charming naivete of its debut, Alice in Chains is pompous, turgid, no riffs, a bore. And the group doesn’t even rock--this album is about competence, not ideology.

But the group looks the part in its videos, right down to the hair flips and the abstractly gloomy posing. And the campaign has sort of worked: Fans, journalists and Rip magazine photo specials alike refer to the current Seattle thing as “Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden/Alice in Chains,” despite the fact that Alice in Chains is as peripheral to the Northwest underground scene as, say, Warrant is to the underground scene that gave birth to Guns N’ Roses. Call them Seattle Lite.