Is This Thing Cursed? Alkaline Trio

• 1Is This Thing Cursed?02:43
• 2Blackbird03:20
• 3Demon and Division03:16
• 4Little Help?02:23
• 5I Can't Believe04:01
• 6Sweet Vampires03:23
• 7Pale Blue Ribbon02:00
• 8Goodbye Fire Island03:31
• 9Stay03:29
• 10Heart Attacks02:20
• 11Worn So Thin02:35
• 12Throw Me To The Lions03:18
• 13Krystalline03:29
• Total Runtime39:48

Info for Is This Thing Cursed?

Across two decades, eight albums, and a multitude of singles, splits, and EPs, Alkaline Trio has built a reputation as a defining act in punk rock’s modern era. Formed in Chicago by vocalist-guitarist Matt Skiba in 1996, the band would come into its own with its debut album Goddammit in 1998. Since then, the band has continually evolved, incorporating new influences with each record while achieving artistic, critical, and commercial success along the way. It’s been 5 years since Alkaline Trio released their last studio album, My Shame Is True. In that time, they’ve toured the world, sold over a million records, including a 20th Anniversary – 8 LP live box set, recorded on their 2014-15 Past Live tour. Since those Past Live shows, Andriano and drummer Derek Grant both released solo albums, and Skiba joined blink-182, releasing the chart-topping album California with the band. Alkaline Trio’s live shows have always been thrilling due to the fact that, even as the band ascended through the ranks of punk, they always retained the feeling of three friends excited to be on stage together. “When I think of a Trio live show,” says Skiba, “I always go back to the humble beginnings of the band, and I want that to always be in this band.” Alkaline Trio closed 2017 with a coveted opening slot for The Original Misfits, a band Skiba describes as his “first love,” Alkaline Trio is primed to step back into the spotlight. “We have the wind at our backs, it seems,” says Skiba. “Every aspect of the band—be it business or artistically or whatever—it feels like the Gods are in our corner.” Andriano agrees, and says that he’s ready to make the band’s best record yet. “I wanna be a band that people want to hear new stuff from. Because I feel like I’m still in a band that wants to write good, new music.” Is This Thing Cursed? will prove that good, new music is worth the wait.

Matt Skiba, guitar, vocals
Dan Andriano, bass, vocals
Derek Grant, drums, vocals

Recorded April 2018 at The Lair, Culver City, California
Produced by Cameron Webb

Alkaline Trio’s
iconic Heart & Skull symbol has come to represent more than the viscerally creative band and their deeply connective albums. While it does symbolize those things, the instantly recognizable logo tattooed on the bodies, hearts and minds of supporters worldwide also denotes a diverse but decisive lifestyle equal parts passion and dedication. It’s a commitment to the triumph of the outsider.

Those who display the emblem do so as a badge, a show of unity in individuality. Like the skeleton-with-a-martini attached to Social Distortion, the Crimson Ghost associated with the Misfits or the “bars” intrinsically linked to Black Flag, Alkaline Trio’s logo is representative of subculture itself; a type of victory, through longevity and purpose, that transcends arbitrary commercial appeal and celebrity groupthink.

Now more than 15 years into their career, the dark punk trio has cemented their legacy with their eighth studio album. Feverishly determined to never make the same record twice, Alkaline Trio nevertheless have preserved the most electric elements of their collaborative songwriting abilities, as their most diehard listeners have come to expect, while ever broadening their palette with new colors and extremes.

The raw energy of ‘70s proto-punk, the darkly romantic sensibility and tongue-in-cheek wordplay of ‘80s new-wave, the upbeat melodicism of the underground power-pop movement of the ‘90s and the eclectic individualism of the new millennium all have a home in the Alkaline Trio sound, which is stunningly contemporary in execution yet as timeless as the hook-infused Top 40 of Midcentury America.

The downtrodden, the dispossessed, the ill-at-ease; they have all found something to identify with in Alkaline Trio’s creative output, vociferously declaring their dedication and the life-preserving encouraging power of the songs across social media. The new material furthers the building story, adding new twists to the diverse elements strewn throughout 2010’s intimately reimagined collection Damnesia with the energized promise befitting a band whose continued position in the fabric of the underground community has been assured since their 1998 debut.

Recorded with Bill Stevenson of punk legends The Descendents (and Black Flag) at the drummer/producer’s Blasting Room Studios in Colorado, Alkaline Trio’s latest offering exhibits the hard-won anthems of an album made while sequestered away from home surrounded by the inspiration of desert sunsets bright nighttime stars.

Alkaline Trio formed in 1996 in the Midwest, looking for neither fame nor fortune, but instead working toward a potential future where their music would be meaningful to likeminded and/or disenfranchised people. Once, on tour, they optimistically imagined someday averaging crowds of 300 people from city to city, never dreaming that they would, in fact, someday hit #11 on the Billboard charts.

An early “trio” of albums comprised of Goddamnit (1998), Maybe I’ll Catch Fire (2000) and From Here to Infirmary (2001) steadily built the Alkaline Trio story, connecting with people on levels much deeper than the sounds of fly-by-night pop-punk bands more concerned with tabloid culture than authentic expression. Good Mourning (2003) songs like “Blue in the Face” further explored the darkness while Crimson (2005) tracks like “Mercy Me” greatly expanded upon the band’s past, as did the entirety of Agony & Irony (2008). What began on indie labels and flirted with the twists-and-turns of the corporate majors returned to its roots with the band’s own imprint through Epitaph in 2010 and the release of the powerful This Addiction, which ably used the drug heroin as a metaphor for love in its title track.

Band co-founder Matt Skiba (vocals/guitar), Dan Andriano (vocals/bass) and drummer Derek Grant have established a chemistry together that is uniquely their own. There’s a combustible magic in the room when they perform on stage, when they collaborate in the studio and when they interact with fans at their shows.

The band may sometimes celebrate the dark, the macabre, the reckless; they may tackle the underbelly of modern existence and the tragedy of man’s inhumanity to man; but there’s a light in the darkness, much like the heart that surrounds the skull, to be found in their expression. Alkaline Trio represents strength from adversity, armor from scar tissue, and the resolve to overcome. No matter how dark times can get, there’s a sinister smile, a sly twist of phrase and a sweet melody to survive with.

This album contains no booklet.