In early 1991, Alice in Chains landed the opening slot for the Clash of the Titans with Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer, exposing the band to a wide metal audience. The band continued to hone its audience, opening for such artists as Iggy Pop, Van Halen, Poison, and Extreme.
Release and reception Professional ratings The original concept for the cover was to have all four members' faces superimposed into one startling expression, which appeared years later in the Music Bank box set. After seeing the photo, the band decided to name the album Facelift. A photo of bassist Mike Starr was chosen as the album cover. Schenck did not want to duplicate the original black and white photo, so he tried the same technique in color using photos of each band member's face. The band had seen Schenck's portfolio of black and white portraits of haunted, distorted faces, and asked him to duplicate the technique. Schenck was experimenting with in-camera multiple exposures, where he would create a distorted image by exposing different parts of a single frame of film one exposure at a time, a technique that he had been using for years in his videos and art photography.