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This Addiction is a chiseled, go-for-broke disc with a modicum of overdubs, melodic flourishes, and even harmonies.
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Alkaline Trio aren’t naïve punk rockers from the Chicago suburbs anymore, as a result this album fails to recapture that innocence but succeeds in creating another strong body of work that the group can be proud of.
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Q MagazineThe title track sets the tone with its exploration of heroin addiction as a metaphor for relationships, but it's "The American Scream"--a gritty, neo-gothic parable--that best illustrates Alkaline Trio's unique take on three chords and the truth. [Mar 201, p.97]
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This Addiction promises exactly what the title describes, as most older fans will eat this up.
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Fans will be pleased to find Alkaline Trio remembering what it's like to be itself.
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Alternative PressWhile This Addiction might not be perfect, it's a more than respectable entry into the band's already sizable canon, proving that though they may be in that rarified group of punk-rock lifers, Alkaline Trio aren't done evolving yet. [Mar 2010, p.89]
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Hooky, blood-soaked bad-love allegories such as "Draculina" and "Dine, Dine My Darling" (check the punny Misfits nod) satisfy like heartburn-inducing comfort food.
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This Addiction is interesting and ultimately noteworthy because it finds a way to continue on with the band’s winning schematics while tweaking the blueprints in such a way that it's almost hard to notice that you’ve been duped by all the seeming predictability.
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With its return to a more straight-forward approach, ‘This Addiction’ does hark back to the likes of ‘Goddamnit’ and ‘Maybe I’ll Catch Fire’. Unfortunately, while not being a bad album, it is not a patch on those seminal earlier releases…. Simply a solid recycling of their much-loved sound.
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It’s hardly the best of their Asian Man days, but This Addiction is a solid mix of their old and new sounds that is well worth a listen.
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Their 2008 major-label bid, Agony & Irony, got bogged down in power-ballad overreach, so with its seventh disc, the group is back to its bleak-Blink-182 roots.
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The album is a pointedly minimal production, though -- most tracks are simple guitar-bass-drum affairs with a few tasteful harmonies that put the surprisingly durable hooks up front.
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Aging punks flog a rapidly expiring horse.
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Based on the simple songwriting and the nauseating lyrical content, This Addiction is sad, and to the die-hard Alkaline Trio fans such as myself, it will greatly disappoint.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 17
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Mixed: 2 out of 17
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Negative: 1 out of 17
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Mar 31, 2022
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Jan 2, 2014