Review Summary: The soundtrack to treading water
Alkaline Trio had lost a good amount of their original fans with their more "experimental" releases
Crimson and
Agony and Irony. The band wanted to feel the nostalgia of
From Here To Infirmary, so they basically ripped off their own album. I guess the trio got sick of only seeing new faces at shows, and they began to wonder "At what point did we appeal to the widest range of fans? Ahh,
From Here To Infirmary, it was poppy enough for mainstream audiences, but still had enough edge for the diehards." This is only speculation of course, but I'm pretty sure the writing process for
This Addiction went a little something like that. And it worked because
This Addiction had the highest debut on the Billboard charts of any Alkaline Trio, even though it's just a cheap knock off of their best pop-punk albums.
I have no clue where the band could possibly go after this, and I don't think they know either. Just last year they released an acoustic greatest hits album that just screamed "we don't know what we're doing."
Agony and Irony had its faults, but at least it progressed the band's sound and felt inspired. Even the title track of
This Addiction is derivative garbage. Woah, comparing a relationship to drug addiction, I've never heard that one before!
It's not even worth mentioning any of the tracks because none of them stand out and they're all just average.
This Addiction is the soundtrack to a band trying way too hard to relive the glory days while abandoning all progress and creativity in the process.
This Addiction's biggest fault is that it's simply an inferior product, an uninspired mess of a knockoff of
From Here To Infirmary. If this came out in 2001 it would probably have been better received, but alas, it came out in 2010 when pop-punk fans hopefully knew better.
