Glenn Hughes
Addiction

Some chimes... Dull thuds... against my temples I feel an unbearable pressure...
Pain... suffering... Darkness...
Then the anger... tears slide down my cheeks... to the lips and on the clenched teeth...
Blood and salt mix but have the same taste... That intense bitterness that pushes you to fight against a failure, against a loss... against something that is no more... that has permanently changed us...
To which we had dedicated who knows how much time and hoped never ever to have to abandon...

Screams and despair...

But life goes on... and the pain makes us feel bad, but it makes us understand how alive we are...
So we fight because it's not over... Because only when you hit the bottom you realize what we are really capable of doing and what our abilities and our great fortunes are... in the hope of never returning to that dark and desolate place again...

This is the message that a disk/concept like Addiction (1996) by Glenn Hughes conveyed to me, where Glenn makes a kind of autobiography about his past of excesses (drugs being the primary one) and losses (his friend Tommy Bolin, the ex-guitarist of Deep Purple, who died of an overdose).
His chameleonic voice undergoes a truly impressive transformation compared to his typical standards.
Constantly scratchy and only in small sections delicate and “tender”, rarely high-pitched and hoarse, the voice with that typically black timbre of Mr. Glenn Hughes conveys everything I talked about perfectly, almost as if he were experiencing the emotions described live while recording.
The kind of music proposed is a kind of very heavy and dark rock-blues that you would never expect from this artist, despite his very brief period spent with Black Sabbath (The Seventh Star a great album).
And this is the strength of an album that, in my opinion, has not been considered enough compared to the other masterpieces of the voice of Rock.
The work done by the great musicians like Marc Bonilla (guitar, keyboards with whom Hughes wrote most of the pieces), Joe Travers (drums), and Joakim Marsh (guitar), who accompany the talented Glenn (who, for those who don’t know, is also a bassist) only in this album, is practically flawless and is indeed full of mood and groove.
The tracks are mostly loaded and rather direct, in your face as the Americans say (e.g. tracks like Death of Me, Addiction or Cover Me), even if there are a couple of really well done and rather moving ballads such as Talk About It or the final I Don’t Want To Live That Way Again, in which Glenn delivers phenomenal performances that have more than once moved me to the verge of tears.
The recording quality of the album is, dare I say, perfectly balanced and there can be no negative criticism about it.
Peculiar but in my opinion appropriate the artwork that depicts in some photos a really serious Glenn Hughes as you rarely see and in others some objects related to drugs and memories (e.g. pills, a blackboard, etc.). Certainly, the artwork is not a masterpiece, but you can definitely overlook it also because in almost all Glenn Hughes albums, the artwork is practically non-existent or really kitschy (see From Now On) also because his music and especially his voice are more than enough to make us appreciate spending money on the CD.

Surely a peculiar album that I would not recommend to approach an artist like Glenn Hughes (better albums like From Now On or the latest Song In The Key Of Rock) as he generally tends to propose a genre somewhat sunnier and more varied, but I would still recommend it for its sad, dark and compelling beauty. Albums like this are hard to find in circulation these days, so if you like music a bit heavy, a bit doomy and sung with more than just a voice, then what are you waiting for, go buy this album!