Thirty years after Alice in Chains stepped into Brooklyn’s Majestic Theater with acoustic guitars and no safety net, the band is finally putting that night back in fans’ hands. On September 25, 2026, the group’s 1996 MTV Unplugged performance returns in a remastered vinyl and CD reissue — the first time the album has been pressed on vinyl in the United States, according to Alice in Chains’ official store.

Key Points

• The reissue lands September 25, 2026, marking the album’s first-ever U.S. vinyl pressing.
• It arrives in three formats: a limited “Solar Flare” translucent yellow-and-red marbled vinyl ($32.98), a standard black double LP ($29.98), and a CD pressed on a translucent red disc ($10.99), per the band’s official shop listing.
• The original set was taped April 10, 1996, at the Majestic Theater inside the Brooklyn Academy of Music, according to Alice in Chains’ own announcement.
• It was the band’s first live show in more than two years, and one of the final times the lineup performed with original vocalist Layne Staley, per Consequence.
• The 13-song set included “Nutshell,” “Brother,” “No Excuses,” “Would?” and “Rooster,” according to Consequence’s report.

The taping itself was shakier than the polished broadcast let on. Jerry Cantrell reportedly came down with food poisoning right before the cameras rolled, and the band was stepping back into a national spotlight after Staley’s struggles with addiction had forced a temporary breakup in late 1994, Consequence reports. Nobody watching that night knew how close the whole thing had come to not happening.

None of that tension made it onto tape. What did was a hushed, minor-key set that swapped the band’s usual sludge and distortion for something closer to a séance — stripped-down guitars, tight harmonies between Staley and Cantrell, and a rendition of “Nutshell” that’s since become one of the most quoted acoustic performances to come out of the grunge era. Reviews were mixed when the special first aired, but it’s since been reappraised as one of the strongest entries in the entire Unplugged franchise, according to Consequence.

Staley stopped performing live with the band not long after the broadcast aired, which is a big part of why the tape carries different weight now than it did in 1996. It plays less like a promotional TV special today and more like a farewell nobody clocked as one in the moment.

For a band whose catalog runs heavy on drop-D riffs and doom-laced choruses, this reissue is a reminder that Alice in Chains’ most enduring hour might be the one where the amps got turned off. Three decades later, that’s still the version people reach for first.