Comebacks are rare, and returns from 15-year hiatuses are even more so. Throw in the death of a lead singer, a new record label and other personnel changes, and it stopped being fair long ago. Guns N’ Roses had a hard enough time with only half those problems. Yet guitarist / singer Jerry Cantrell and ’90s rock monster Alice in Chains just couldn’t be bothered with the mire, doom and gloom unless they were writing about it. Black Gives Way to Blue is more than a reunion with Mike Inez and Sean Kinney to produce a return to form. It’s also one of the best rock albums of 2009.

To replace a vocalist as tuneful and iconic as Layne Staley has been impossible. Bands influenced by AiC, as diverse as Life of Agony, Staind, Godsmack, Days of the New and a never-ending list have all had competent vocalists that have been jeered at by critics as Staley-derivativea. The only person who could even hope to get away with comparisons was Jerry Cantrell himself, and he sang on half of AiC’s original material anyway. Well, his golden touch adds a glow of authenticity to the new record. “Check My Brain” feels like it came right off of Dirt or 1995’s self-titled album, and “Your Decision” and “When the Sun Rose Again” recall the band’s softer EPs Sap and Jar of Flies. Then you have tunes like the jagged, angularly melodic opener “All Secrets Known,” the elephantine, foot-stomping opening grove of “A Looking in View” and the piano-tinged quiet exit of a title track, “Black Gives Way to Blue.”

The haunting, tortured vocals of William DuVall are a spooky echo of Staley, as if the deceased front-man’s spirit is being channeled through the songs themselves, but it could also just be the ghost-like nature of AiC’s trademarked minor key voice harmonies. Cantrell and DuVall coexist and bring the tunes to life.

Never quite an alternative grunge band like the groups they were lumped in with by radio stations over a decade ago, Alice in Chains spew their triumphant new work from speakers with crunch and doom metal fury. Just listen to the f-bombing tunnel-chewing groove of “Last of My Kind” and step out of the way as this reanimated corpse barrels through.