William DuVall of Alice in Chains is the Vocalist for Giraffe Tongue Orchestra (Mastodon / Dillinger Escape Plan)

This Giraffe Tongue Orchestra thing sure has been an adventure, hasn’t it? Outside of Brent Hinds (Mastodon) and Ben Weinman (The Dillinger Escape Plan), the lineup has shifted quite a bit since we first started hearing about it in 2011 — which makes sense given how busy all the various parties must be with their day jobs.

Last we heard (a year ago) actress Juliette Lewis (who also has her own band, Juliette and The Licks) was the vocalist, but now it turns out she was just a special guest. The really real vocalist? Alice in Chains frontman William DuVall! This revelation directly from Weinman, who gave a massive update on the project’s status to Riffing with Christine:

She’s actually not our main singer. She guested… Yeah like everybody kinda takes anInstagram picture and makes their own press around it. But me and her have been working on songs, some of which are for Giraffe Tongue, some of which were just jams that we were working on or whatever. And she did some cool vocals on some of the GTOstuff. Actually, William [DuVall] from Alice In Chains is who has been singing with us.

Most of the music was written before [William] got involved. So it is a similar thing [having the vocalist brought in last] actually. But everybody definitely in this band, it’s a real democracy. You know, it’s a little different for me, it’s been great. Because Dillinger has obviously been my baby since the beginning. You know while everyone contributes, it has always been… it was my vision and baby. So with GTO it’s really a combination of all the elements, all the pieces. So it’s really interesting, it’s been great for me to collaborate like that. And I think when you hear it, it really does sound like all of us in one band somehow.

So that’s pretty cool, yeah? Black Gives Way to Blue, the first Alice in Chains album to feature DuVall, was a helluva comeback record and garnered near unanimous praise from the metal community. His performance on that album (and live) was no small part of that, although his role in AiC always took something of a back seat to Jerry Cantrell’s just due to the nature of the band’s music and the respect paid to Layne Staley’s legacy.

So will we get to hear DuVall branch out a bit here and really show his stuff? If Weinman’s claim that everyone contributes to Giraffe Tongue Orchestra is true, then yes, and we most certainly look forward to that.

Hopefully we’ll get to hear the results later this year.

[via The PRP]