Everyone deals with heartbreak in different ways -- talking through it, sticking close to friends, boxing up old photographs. But those methods aren't too punk rock. Maybe that's why Matt Skiba bought a Ducati motorcycle and went skydiving.

"When you're doing a buck 70 through the air or on the ground, you're not too worried about the breakup," said the frontman and guitarist for the longtime Chicago goth-punkers Alkaline Trio, of his recent pending divorce. "I'm not saying everyone should buy a motorcycle or jump out of a plane, but it worked for me."

His heart-mending manifested itself in more musical ways as well: Alkaline Trio's seventh studio album, "This Addiction," released two weeks ago on the band's own Heart & Skull label, is its fastest, rawest and most wrenching in almost a decade. With 11 tracks in just under 35 minutes, the album is short and sweet; all gut-punching guitars, pop-blast drums and ever-catchy tunes about drugs and death and how the two are metaphors for the darker corners of love.

After a short-lived stint at Epic Records that saw Alkaline Trio (also including bassist/singer Dan Adriano and drummer Derek Grant) release 2008's decidedly un-punk "Agony and Irony," "This Addiction" finds the band recapturing the stripped-down, scrappy punk sound of early albums like 1998's scene classic "Goddamnit!" Conversely, "Agony and Irony" was a shot at, as Mr. Skiba called it, stadium punk.

"We didn't have illusions of grandeur that we'd explode and become sensations playing Madison Square Garden," he said, "but we were using Def Leppard's 'Pyromania' and 'Hysteria' as a template [for 'Agony and Irony']."

While it was Alkaline's highest charting album, "Agony" was a tough pill to swallow for many Trio diehards -- eventually including the band itself.

"We'd strayed so far from where we started, we were going to lose people and, if we weren't careful, lose ourselves," said Mr. Skiba. "It was a natural thing to take a U-turn on this record."

So did the Trio break out the old Misfits and Black Flag LPs? Not quite. For "This Addiction," Mr. Skiba looked to a new icon for inspiration: Neil Diamond. Instead of aping the pop-metal excess of Def Leppard, Alkaline Trio took to Mr. Diamond's intimate, no-frills "12 Songs" as the model for "This Addiction."

"Rick Rubin [producer of '12 Songs'] made Neil go back and listen to his old stuff. There comes a time in your career when all roads lead back to how you started, even if the music doesn't sound like it did," said Mr. Skiba.

Although "This Addiction" sounds worlds apart from any Neil Diamond tune, the sentiment stands -- fast and furious, raw and raging, it's a true return to form, the band's attempt to "remember why people initially started to like our band," he said. To recapture its original energy, the band wrote and pre-recorded the tunes after soundchecks during its "Agony and Irony" tour, eventually recording all together in Chicago -- a big change from recent records, for which the band e-mailed each other independently recorded parts.

Through shifting sounds and genres (shades of The Cure were draped all over 2005's "Crimson"), Alkaline Trio's constant draw has long been a careful balance between giant hooks and dark, caustic lyrics. Few bands can turn "That's where she found me, in the cemetery ... a smoking gun in my hand ..." (from "This Addiction's" "The American Scream") into an undeniable sing-along.

"There's a duality to this band," said Mr. Skiba. "I've always been attracted to all things dark and macabre, so we've always written about dark topics, but to hooky progressions and melodies. You can't have light without dark; you can't have life without death, or love without hate."

On the album's self-titled opener, Mr. Skiba deadpans, "You hit me just like heroin; feel you coursing through my veins." The metaphor is a cautionary one, said Skiba.

"I've had some really amazing experiences on drugs. I've done heroin. I like to drink quite a bit. I've my vices, but I can stop -- I give my body a break," he said, "because if you really like something, you need to be careful of it."

In the song's chorus, the singer howls, "This addiction, can't seem to live without you ... I go through withdrawal without you." It's a stark look at quitting love, and fits well with Alkaline Trio's canon of anthems, including past gems such as "Dead and Broken," "This Is Getting Over You" and "Goodbye Forever."

" 'This Addiction' has some of the darkest subject matter that I've written about. It was a very personal, cathartic record to write," he said. "But there's a sense of hope to it -- there's the question and the pain, but also the answer and the ointment."

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.