Flashback Friday: “Them Bones” by Fishbone

MoPOP Founders award show performance from 2020

Jan 30, 2026

When Fishbone dropped their official cover of Alice in Chains’ “Them Bones” on December 19, 2025, it wasn’t just another tribute track; it was a sonic victory lap for a band that has spent decades defying the “pigeonhole” predilections of the music industry. The recording is a blistering, one-take live performance that manages to respect the sludge-heavy gravity of Jerry Cantrell’s original while injecting it with the frantic, brass-heavy “Nutmeg” energy only Fishbone can provide.

The origins of this specific recording date back to October 28, 2020. At the time, the world was in the depths of lockdowns, and Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture (MoPop) was preparing a virtual celebration for their annual Founders Award, which honored Alice in Chains that year.

Because Alice in Chains and Fishbone had bonded years earlier during the 1993 Lollapalooza tour, Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney personally reached out to the band to participate. This request acted as a catalyst for a historic moment: it brought together the original Fishbone lineup (along with longtime collaborator Mark Phillips) for their first public performance since 1993.

Despite the performance being a standout moment of the 2020 MoPop broadcast, the audio remained an “official bootleg” of sorts for five years. The delay in its commercial release was tied to a few factors: 1. Fishbone has famously struggled with label disputes and the fight for their masters over the years. This recording was captured as part of a benefit broadcast, which often involves complex licensing rights between the museum, the original songwriters, and the performers. 2. The band chose to release the track as a capstone to 2025—a year that saw their massive comeback album, Stockholm Syndrome, remind the world of their relevance. By releasing “Them Bones” now, they’ve bridged the gap between their legendary past and their upcoming 2026 studio material.

Musically, Fishbone’s “Them Bones” is a perfect example of adaptation… While many metal covers of the song lean into the original’s nihilistic weight, Fishbone adds a “rock meets R&B” sensibility. The dissonant vocal harmonies between Angelo Moore and Christopher Dowd mirror the haunting Staley/Cantrell blend but are backed by punchy, aggressive horns that give the track a ska-punk skeletal structure.

It is a “one-take” recording in the truest sense—raw, urgent, and devoid of the over-sanitized production common in modern rock. It captures a moment in time where a group of legendary musicians, separated by decades of internal friction, found common ground in the heavy riffs of their old tour mates.