Album Review: Damnesia by Alkaline Trio

Just as Alkaline Trio were getting ready to head off for their 15th anniversary tour in July of 2011, Epitaph Records/Heart & Skull released a compilation of the emo-punk band’s favorite tracks, all reworked acoustically. For Damnesia, Matt Skiba, Dan Andriano, and Derek Grant pick a smattering of songs from seven of their albums, spanning from 2010’s This Addiction back to 1998’s Goddamnit!, and give them an intimate unplugged treatment with some broad arrangements. As well as performing lighter versions of old fan faves "Radio," "Private Eye," and "This Could Be Love," they attempt a cover of Violent Femmes' “I Held Her in My Arms" and introduce two new tracks, “I Remember a Rooftop” and “Olde English 800.” .

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Chicago punk-rockers turn down the volume on excellent acoustic LP. Ian Winwood 2011 In his sparse and suitably shocking novel Closer, author Dennis Cooper has two of his characters partake in violent sex while listening to Slayer’s South of Heaven album. Much is made of the rather kooky artwork of the front sleeve – a skull laying dormant in what one presumes are the fiery furnaces of Hell – and lyrics such as "strangulation, suffocation, death is f***ing you insane," with the implication being that while cruel carnal relations can be truly shocking, this kind of gory excess is frankly a little laughable.

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When an artist releases a “Best Of”, or in this case re-records songs from their repertoire, certain questions arise. One being the obvious, “why?”. In this case, that question remains unanswered. As exciting as it might of been to hear of the release of Damnesia, all hopes of a solid re-do of some classic Trio songs quickly fall by the wayside after just one spin.

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