Album Reviews

As much as I liked albums like “Crimson” and “Agony & Irony” (and I do like them a whole lot), I first fell in love with Alkaline Trio’s older releases. Albums like “Goddamnit”. And so it’s good to hear those sounds again in “This Addiction”, the band’s seventh full-length. It’s the perfect marriage of their earlier punkrock sounds and the slick rock tunes from their later albums.

Even though Andriano only leads on three tracks, he steals the show with “Off The Map” being my favorite new Alk 3 song. That’s not saying that songs like “Dead On The Floor”, “The American Scream” or “Dorothy” are anything less than really good. The synths on “Draculina” and “Eating Me Alive” sound a little too cheesy at first but after a couple of listens, I have come to terms with them and actually think they belong on the album. A little cheese is never a bad thing. The same goes for the trumpet that pops up in “Lead Poisoning”. Was it necessary? No. But it does make the album a little more diverse. Love it or hate it.

“This Addiction” is the first album to come out on their the band’s label Heart & Skull which has deals with Epitaph for the US and Hassle for Europe. And while it’s not their finest release to date, it’s a worthy addition to the band’s already respectable discography with a new batch of highly addictive tunes.