Addicted is the second part of a four chapter spanning cycle, you might also call it a self-discovery process of the DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT.
Said the master: “With Ki I was venturing into uncharted terrain […] Addicted however is totally simple. 10 straightforward and rocking songs”
Well, “totally simple” I’d figure differently.

In fact Addicted is rocking out, but totally overloaded and ostensibly produced on riot. You only can wonderingly watch, funnily jump and go into enthusiasm (or howl respectively) at the voluminous sound thunder-storm mixed with Techno-Metal („upta-upta-didel-dam-didel-jah-addicted“ – or something like that).
BesideDEVIN TOWNSEND lovely Anneke van Giersbergen gives her exquisite voice to Addicted. After her goodbye from classy melancholiacs The Gathering she’s allowed to glaze TOWNSENDs current album with bell-like happiness, which stands in a… err… interesting contrast to the dashing guitar walls and the eruptive sound-of-wall technology.
It’s at parts wild head-banging music, which would perfectly entertain at a late hoedown. Blows away the marksmen's festival tent with pompous sound cascades, which tows and kicks fair-techno to Metal (Resolve).
The biggest smasher under smashers is the semi-ballad Ih-Ah, almost a homage to Winnie the Poohs existentialist buddy Eeyore, its intro suspiciously sounds like a prelude to the Backstreet Boys (irony, I can see what you're leading up to?!).
It gets even dwarfed by passages, where DEVIN TOWNSEND gives the opera singer (Bend It Like Bender, The Way Home, Numbered). Especially Bend It Like Bender is stunning Vaudeville-Theater. „We are young and we have fun”, even if it sticks to an “all in all” and a “sacred cow” at the end. Anneke is much convincing.

Addicted is an excessive heavy-Pop-bombast-Metal-bowling-party, at full force, while it’s wafting and crashing in the spacious hall of the mountain king.
Those, who still remember Xanadu, the collaboration between Electric Light Orchestras and Olivia Newton-John - at doubled speed, might get a rough idea how Addicted sounds like.
An over the top, thoroughly artificial product that makes a lot of fun on its own impudent way – but is a joke at the same time. I was laughing hard: „Ih-Ah"...