Alkaline Trio - Agony And Irony

by Pete Charles

Hurriedly condemning self-harm since 1996

"The album's opening line appears to be a reverent doff of the cap to 80s underground hardcore act The Minutemen. Their influence on the record, of course, is far from obvious – you tend to assume bands like Alkaline Trio grew up listening to Queen and The Cure."

Twelve years on and Chicago’s Alkaline Trio are still doing bloody battle with the various demons that plague their lives, or at least plague the lives of their fans: death, heaven, hell, evil, love – it’s as if they don’t know how to write about anything else. At any rate, even if Matt Skiba, Dan Andriano and Derek Grant are now mentally stable individuals, millions of their fans still expect them to deliver the cathartic blasts of epic emo-rock that made them famous. Their fifth album ‘Agony and Irony’ is proof enough that the band are more than happy with this arrangement.

As always, they make the traditional verse/chorus song writing formula work wonders for them, ensuring they can continue to spit singles out like a gumball machine. ‘Help Me’, the first from the record, was played a staggering 70,000 times on myspace – in one single day. Good work by any band’s standards, but entirely justified; it’s a simple yet evocative stadium rock belter. The lyrics are easy to identify with, the guitars clean and melodic and the chorus massive. There’s simply no need to try anything too fancy here; even five albums into their career, there’s little point in Alkaline Trio risking a new direction.

No matter what you think about the band’s obvious charm and resulting commercial success, they’re keen to remind us of their lesser known sources of inspiration. Music geeks will prick their ears up at the album’s opening line: “Here it is again / Yet it stings like the first time / Seems like it never ends / Double nickels on your dime” the last five words appearing to be a reverent doff of the cap to 80s underground hardcore act The Minutemen. Their influence on the record, of course, is far from obvious – you tend to assume bands like Alkaline Trio grew up listening to Queen and The Cure.

Aside from the single, ‘Agony and Irony’ has a handful more talking points, including the teary snuff montage of ‘Over And Out’ and the other teary snuff montage of ‘Live Young, Die Fast’. On both tracks, the morbid imagery is layered with melodic, memorable choruses almost to the point of glorifying death. My Chemical Romance have gotten themselves into hot water doing this in the past, but that’s another debate for another day. There’s no point in taking cheap shots at a band that has so firm a grasp of what it’s doing, with undeniably catchy tunes and the record sales to back it up. This won’t exactly make for challenging listening, but Alkaline Trio didn’t get where they are by throwing their fans curve balls.

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