Alkaline Trio – Agony and Irony

Boring catcy punky poo.

This album has all of the elements of skate punk, eccept for it has all of the good bits taken out. It’s far too slow, it’s far too flat and it just insults me.

The only previous work that I can clearly recall by Alkaline Trio, is their first two singles, ‘Stupid Kid’ and ‘Private Eye’ and I think these are really good songs, and I seem to remember them being really good in the early naughties, but this album is tired and grey.

We need to wait until the fifth track to hear an ounce of energy from any of the songs, this is not acceptable. The rest of album is stuffed full of love songs are ballads with very slight rock undertones.

I haven’t heard anything that they have done since ‘From here to infirmary’, so, this mediocrity may have been a long time coming and the current fans of the band may already know what they are getting themselves into, but for me, it was a huge disappointment.
This album is not even a smack on the arm, (they were never a smack in the face).

Listen to this album: While ice-skating on your own, at night.

Rating: 61%

Extracts from ‘Calling all skeletons’, ‘I found away’, ‘Live young, die fast’ and ‘Love love, kiss kiss’

‘Help Me’