Alkaline Trio Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs

Blink One Eighty Who? Matt Skiba returns to form, in all its punky, bloody glory, with the new Alkaline Trio album Blood Hair, and Eyeballs. 

Fresh off a stint in Blink 182, Matt Skiba reunites with Alkaline Trio and delivers the best album from the group since 2003’s Good Mourning. Fast, loud, slender, and stacked from top to bottom with some of the group’s best power pop/punk songs, Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a great return to form for the rockers from Chicago. 

Alkaline Trio had their closest brush with mainstream fame with the aforementioned Good Mourning which featured “We’ve Had Enough” and the superior horror punk-tinged opener “This Could Be Love.” The band’s follow-up Crimson managed to maintain a similar energy, but the burgeoning emo movement began to color the band’s sound thereafter. Eventually, even hardcore acts like AFI entered the emo fray and ended up dominating the scene. Alkaline Trio though would remain the band with the sound even the juggernaut that AFI became would strive to sound like. Good Mourning and to a lesser extent Crimson felt like the best we were going to get from Alkaline Trio. When Skiba was invited to take over for Tom DeLonge while he chased UFOs and retro 80s sounds with Angels and Airwaves, the mourning truly began for Alkaline Trio fans. 

DeLonge’s return to the Blink 182 fold paved the way for Skiba to return to his roots with Alkaline Trio. With songs like “Bad Time,” “Break,” and title track “Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs” Skiba, along with bassist Dan Andriano and drummer Atom Willard push the limits of breakneck punk-infused pop rhythms and riffs. Loud and fast tracks like these off the new album leave longtime fans dying for more. The horror punk-tinged themes are also a nice throwback to the glory days of Good Mourning. Andriano and Skiba still trade off lead vocals on a handful of tracks to great effect allowing for a change of pace vocally that matches a well blended change of pace musically. “Scars,” an Andrino lead stab at arena rock, works well and serves as a nice counterpoint to Skiba’s speedy turn on the vocals during the faster tracks. 

Slightly younger than fellow punk rocker Billie Joe Armstrong (whose band also just released their best album in 20 years), but still facing down middle age, Skiba, at 47, sounds nonetheless reinvigorated and some of his and Alkaline Trio’s best music might still be to come. With a US tour launching soon, now might be the best time to catch the band live if you haven’t in a while. Who knows what inspiration might strike Skiba as he returns to smaller venues and his original fans?