Hopefully It'll Catch Fire

There’s an old axiom that’s says that “Change’s good.” In the case of Alkaline Trio, it fits to a tee. However, they may have lost some old-school Alk3 fans but that’s an unfortunate part of a band’s growth. If you were expecting a twin to the Trio’s 1998 breakthrough album Goddamnit, stop reading now because you’re in the wrong place. While Agony & Irony isn’t near the level of Goddamnit, it is still an amazing album that has the Alk3 trademark: darkly brutal yet entirely relatable lyrics, crunching guitars & a rhythm section that sounds like a meth addict’s heartbeat after shooting up.

The Trio was formed in the Chicago suburb of McHenry in 1996 with Matt Skiba on lead vocals & guitar, Rob Doran on bass & Glen Porter on drums. Doran left a year later after their first EP, Sundials, was released. He was replaced by Dan Andriano, who now switches vocal duties with Skiba in addition to playing bass. Porter left soon after that & after going through drummers like tissues, they found the perfect fit in Derek Grant, formerly of the Vandals & Suicide Machines.
Their latest release, Agony & Irony, was the Trio’s first album on a major label, Epic. They have previously been on Vagrant, V2 (The label folded before they ever put out an album) and Asian Man Records. Fans were very skeptical at first that they will fall victim to the “sell-out” bug that many underground punk bands fall into as soon as they go to a major label, bands like Against Me! & AFI.

The album was produced by Josh Abraham (Billy Idol, 30 Seconds to Mars), who streamlined the Trio’s usual noise tsunami into a sharp sounding razorblade. Most Alk3 fans say that it’s overproduced but it actually comes across as the most organic sounding Trio album since From Here To Infirmary. I do agree that some of the vocals are a bit too tinny and pop-ish but that’s not what draws people (especially myself) to the Trio. It’s the catchy hooks & great songwriting.
The track listing is well thought out, as it starts with three heavy songs then slows it for a bit then picks the tempo up again like a rollercoaster, as an album is supposed to do. The opener, “Calling All Skeletons” has the Goth-lite puns that will bring the Hot Topic kids in. The next song, “Help Me”, was written by Skiba after watching the Ian Curtis bio-pic Control & is homage to the late Joy Division singer, who committed suicide in 1980. Speaking of Joy Division, the 80’s doom-pop & New Wave (i.e. The Cure, Depeche Mode & The Cars) sound was an influence to Skiba when he was writing according to an interview he gave. He also cited The Dammed, David Bowie & The Misfits as inspiration for the album.

The next couple songs, “In Vein” and “Over & Out” are good examples of what the Alk3 sound was on previous albums. Both songs show the excellent lyrics but In Vein shows the musical punch that the Trio packs. In Vein is the first song on the album that features Dan Andriano on lead vocals. He brings a real sense of pain to the song as it’s about a past abusive relationship of which he got the short end of. Andriano, I feel, is the better lyricist out of him and Skiba. Not to say that Skiba’s not good, it’s just that Dan’s lyrics convey anger & frustration a lot better & have a dash of wit to them. Here’s an example from In Vein:

“You recognize this shape; it's the back of your hand. You placed it on my face here again, and again, yeah.”

You can almost picture him flinching as he says this, it’s that good of a lyric. “Over & Out” is a Matt song about four separate people who commit suicide. He takes a page from Dan’s playbook & uses wit to get the person’s pain across:

"Over and out," he sighed, "it seems I've run out of time. Please tell my wife I loved her more than life itself."

Up next are the two best songs on the album. “I Found Away” is about Skiba’s mental state after discovering Transcendental Meditation after reading a David Lynch book. Personally, I relate to this song the best out of the entire album because I went through the same experience with using meditation to help quell my depression & anxiety disorder. Unfortunately for me & not for Skiba, he sums up the feeling perfectly:

“I found away over the fear and through the flames, I'm diving in. Don't follow me, stay right here I'll be back for you someday. I found away, it'd be best if you just stayed. It's not safe, don't follow me. I found away, I found away.”

“Do You Wanna Know?” is the standard Dan Andriano song about yearning for love, whether it’s either lost or found. The next few songs, however, come across as filler with the exception of Love Love, Kiss Kiss which also is the standard Dan song but has the best lyrics in the entire album:

“Well do you find you like to fall in love with people that you're never gonna meet?It's easier than breaking up and crying in the street. Do you curse the happy couple? Do you cringe at wedding bells? Do you drink up all the punch while you wish 'em all to hell?”

Who hasn’t felt like that at one point in their life? That’s what I thought.
The album does end with a great closer called “Into The Night” which follows in the Alk3 tradition of great album closers like Crawl off of FHTI & Blue In The Face off of Good Mourning. Not to be left out, the quick fills & bombastic drumming of Derek Grant adds an extra boost to the already hard-hitting lyrics.

All in all, Agony & Irony shows how much the Trio has grown in their ten year existence. Older fans will probably say that this will be their death knell of the Trio’s true self but me & the rest of the people who bought the album the first week it was on sale to make it the 13th grossing album on the Billboard Top 200 chart for the week of July 9th, 2008 think different. All in all, there’s an underlying message of hope amongst the darkness which isn’t prevalent in any of the previous albums. That may lose some die-hard fans but that will be countered by the tons of new fans they will gain by their new-found optimism. Optimism which will lead them to the recognition they deserve.