Alsasound init script has: ... need bootmisc localmount before modules ... bootmisc needs localmount which needs checkfs which needs modules. Therefore it is never possible to execute alsasound before modules, and this circular dependency can cause trouble. The only reason it works now is because modules is a critical service which totally ignores dependencies. Please remove before modules Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.6
this was fixed about 2 moths ago... get the latest alsasound from /usr/portage/media-sound/alsa-utils/files/alsasound