Alkaline Trio: Agony and Irony
A darker & more polished offering from an underground favorite
By Jeremy Azevedo
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Alkaline Trio has always been known for combining gothic melodrama with hard-driving punk, a combination that has long pleased the elitist music underground. On their new album, “Agony and Irony”, Alkaline Trio has tipped the scales a little bit further into Smiths territory than their more hardcore punk fans will probably appreciate. |
It’s probably a smart decision though, because crust punks aren’t exactly known to purchase a lot of albums, and Alkaline Trio has greater expectations to live up to now that they’re on Epic records, with Josh Abraham (Slayer, Linkin Park, Atreyu, Pink, etc.) producing.
So… Agony and Irony is not a particularly upbeat album, but I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t catchy as hell anyway. Not since The Cure has a band been so adept at making such miserable subject matter sound so poppy. Most of the songs here are real finger-snappers, despite being all about sadness and death. It’s like Alkaline Trio is the evil twin of one of those corny pop punk bands like Angels and Airwaves or whatever band those vapid dorks from Blink 182 are in these days.
The real standout tracks on this album are probably “Live Young, Die Fast” and the album’s closer, “Into the Night”. The former is almost silly in its simplicity, but that won’t stop you from singing along in your car or wherever it is that you do that. The latter is one that reminds me of some of Alkaline Trio’s older, more up-tempo stuff. Some of the tracks in-between suffer from a little bit of sameness the first time you hear them, but grow on you after repeated listening. The only song that I haven’t really got into is “Love Love, Kiss Kiss”, a song that would have been better as a Weezer song, but sounds labored in its sarcasm here. Despite that one minor misstep, it’s still a great album overall.
Rating: 8 out of 10
+1 if you’ve just been through a nasty breakup and feel like sulking
-1 if you hate synthesizers in your punk rock like I hate pineapple on my pizza (i.e. with the passion of 1,000 suns)
