By: Caitlin Hoffman
For BiggerThanBeyonce.Com

What’s something you look for in a gothic punk rock band? Chilling imagery, wicked style, overwhelming choruses, smoky, pungent lines? Well, you don’t have to look any further. Budding from Chicago, Alkaline Trio can fill every musical void you have (in fact, when they’re done with you, you’ll be overflowing).

Anyone who can appreciate mastery can appreciate Alkaline Trio. Their unbridled ambition and keen exploration results in a perfect union of heart cracking sensitivity and sensual, dark undertones. And with their new album This Addiction, they’ve continued down that same road, switching up their own inner direction.

This Addiction has a deadly ring to it, with crisp vocals and a heavy bass that keeps the sound air-tight. The drums control your eyes, and the guitar decides how you move your feet and hands. Everything, including your heart is drawn to the rhythm that these characters have in their system.

Though their music continues to overpower indefinitely, this album seems more mellow than their previous ones, as if the band has become more comfortable with the strength in their own music. Such a newfound maturity (as well as a switch to a new record label) has given the band the initiative to zap up the power grid while still managing to hit brain cells like a vial of pure lithium. With that breath of fresh artistic air, they’ve managed to go back to the old style punk roots of The Velvet Underground.

Matt Skiba, vocalist for the band, says that This Addiction is a melded expression of all the various romantic struggles the band had dealt with in the past year, and speaks of a united theme throughout regarding the pain and toxicity of love. He explains that the title song of the album ‘takes heroin addiction as a metaphor for love’.

The pure honesty you’re confronted with by this album makes it clear that the lyrics have been taken from real-life inspiration, genuine heartbreak and genuine pain. Now that’s something anyone can relate to. These guys aren’t washed out, plasticized, or corporatized. They’re full of strength and crammed with poetry.

Be prepared to have your guts shell-shocked and your circuits rewired, because Alkaline Trio is ripping through the ears of the world, and they’re not leaving anyone behind.

Alkaline Trio – “This Addiction”

Alkaline Trio | MySpace Music Videos

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