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“This Addiction,” Alkaline Trio’s seventh studio album, takes Alkaline Trio back to the roots of their first releases.
The Trio returned to their hometown of Chicago to record the album and work with the producer of much of their early work, Matt Allison.
In collaboration with Epitaph Records, Alkaline Trio began their own label called Heart & Skull, on which this album was released.
After their last two albums, “Agony & Irony” and “Crimson,” changed the band’s typical punk-rock style, this new album will either be well received by fans or taken as a step back in the bands maturing.
References comparing drug addiction to love are found throughout the album. In the first track, “This Addiction,” vocalist Matt Skiba opens with “You hit me just like heroin/I feel you coursing through my veins.”
Half way into the third song, I was already getting sick of the same song premises, but maybe I’m not punk rock enough to understand how love and drugs are quality song content for the entire 35 minutes of the album.
Luckily, the horns in the track “Lead Poisoning” caught my attention, because the typical punk drum beats, guitar chords and whiny vocals were losing me.
Then the next track started, and it was right back to the same thing.
I honestly can’t say there was one song on this album that stuck out to me.
Some of their lyrics, such as, “Every ride on a fork tongue/This twine of trust is unspun” from “Off The Map,” are wonderfully pieced together, and others, such as, “Well now you’re stuck in my head like a love song/That climbed to the top of the charts” from “Eating Me Alive” seem like words from an awful R&B or pop song on the radio.
I think I may have enjoyed the lyrics from “Off The Map,” because it was the Trio’s other vocalist, Dan Andriano’s, work.
Unfortunately, he’s only featured on three tracks on the album.
For me, Alkaline Trio just seems like another band where the appearance is just as important as the music.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that most of the guys in the music I enjoy all look the same, but it’s just something about constantly appearing as though you’re depressed that just doesn’t make sense to me.
I think that if you like Alkaline Trio at all, you will most likely enjoy this album. While it lacks originality between tracks, it brings the band back to the punk rock they started out with.
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