“Addict” by Until They Burn Me comes charging in like a garage-rock car with its brakes cut, turning the turmoil of addiction into an up-tempo, aggressive blast of sound. The Ferndale-based duo of Cody Carlyle and Travis Jordan bring more than musical imagination to the track; their decades-long friendship and shared history give its subject matter a bruising authenticity. Both recovering addicts who once survived homelessness together, the pair transform those experiences into a song that confronts addiction not from a distance, but from inside the wreckage.
Musically, “Addict” deliberately looks backward while keeping its fists firmly in the present. Bounding drums and sharp, churning guitars give the track a gritty propulsion, recalling the garage and skate-rock energy of the late ’80s and early ’90s, with hints of early Faith No More lurking around the edges. Yet the production doesn’t feel like mere nostalgia. There is a contemporary punch underneath the throwback aesthetic, making the song feel less like a museum piece and more like an old sound dragged through modern scars.
The vocals are equally uncompromising. The singer delivers each line with a strong, emphatic aggression, sounding almost cornered by the very thing he is describing. The lyrics capture addiction’s maddening contradiction: craving something while simultaneously despising what it does to you. Moments of paranoia, physical distress and self-destruction tumble through the song before its imagery becomes particularly devastating, portraying someone burning intensely while shortening their own existence.
That tension is what gives “Addict” its bite. Beneath the bounding rhythm and snarling guitars is a painfully human story about relapse, compulsion, survival and recovery. Until They Burn Me may be a studio-only project working across Washington and Ohio, but “Addict” feels anything but distant. It is raw, nostalgic and ferocious—a throwback rocker carrying wounds that never sound nostalgic at all.
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Review by: Naomi Joan