Just days after Code Orange covered "Down In A Hole" by Alice In Chains, Denver doomsters Khemmis released a cover of the same song.
"I’ve loved this band since I discovered grunge and hard rock in my early teens," guitarist/vocalist Ben Hutcherson told Consequence of Sound. "When we were presented with the opportunity to cover my favorite song from one of my favorite bands, I checked a pretty big item off of my bucket list. It’s an honor to take such a powerful piece of music and reimagine it through the creative lens of this band. We knew we wanted to stay true to parts of the song, particularly the chorus, but that we also needed to make it our own."
"Alice in Chains has long been one of the most important bands in my life," he adds. "Though they’re (understandably) associated with the Seattle grunge scene, their music carries a visceral heft that, for me, wasn’t present for the other bands of that music world. Dirt was, and remains, a landmark album of bleakness paired with incredible songwriting, and “Down in a Hole” was one of the first songs I learned to play on my dad’s old Takamine acoustic guitar back in ’98 or ’99. The fact that a song like that works as well, if not better, on an acoustic guitar as on a distorted electric guitar is a testament to the power of what those four guys created together."
The cover is off Magnetic Eye Records' upcoming Dirt [Redux] tribute album, as part of the same series that released The Wall [Redux] -- with Pallbearer, Mark Lanegan, Yawning Man, and others covering Pink Floyd -- ini 2018. The upcoming album also includes Thou (doing "Them Bones"), -16- (doing "Hate To Feel"), High Priest (doing "Rain When I Die"), Somnuri (doing "Dirt"), and more. Stream the Khemmis cover and check out the full tracklist below.
Khemmis also released an EP with a Dio cover this year.
Tracklist 01. Thou – Them Bones 02. Low Flying Hawks – Dam That River 03. High Priest – Rain When I Die 04. Khemmis – Down in a Hole 05. These Beasts – Sickman 06. Howling Giant – Rooster 07. Forming the Void – Junkhead 08. Somnuri – Dirt 09. Backwoods Payback – God Smack 10. Black Electric – Iron Gland 11. – (16) – – Hate to Feel 12. Vokonis – Angry Chair 13. The Otolith – Would?
