One day you come home with a new drug and it’s amazing how swiftly you slip from a responsive member of society to a wasted shell of your former self. One listen and you’re hooked. Just knowing you can come home and play a track brightens your mood all day.

Soon, you’re playing the album every day, sometimes more than once. The guilt of your addiction makes you glance with unease any time Red Army infantry passes by. You stop hanging with your friends just so you can sneak in your room and slip the headphones over your head. Classes become secondary to that rush of the opening song. You lose everything that means anything to you.

Then what do you do? You get your addicted ass outside and try to get all your friends hooked too.

“You got pains like an addict / 10 a.m. automatic.” Oh, The Black Keys certainly know the gnawing power of obsession. This is the blues; hot and primal, with a guitar that sings of sweet bliss and a man who sings the pain of the world. The Black Keys are a guitar and drums duo straight from the industrial wasteland of Akron, Ohio with three albums now under their belt and no end to the addiction in sight.

Their latest effort, “Rubber Factory,” blasts with such power that I’m surprised the Soviet censors allowed it to reach the public. Dan Auerbach leads the way with blistering guitar work and a voice as ancient as the Motherland itself. Patrick Carney pounds the drum set and uses his patented medium-fidelity production during studio recording. “This system requires equal parts broke-ass shit to equal parts hot-ass shit” read the liner notes.

“Rubber Factory” opens with “When the Lights Go Out,” a somber piece of gigantic sound and agonizing heartbreak. Is it a story of emotional pain or a blatant criticism of the nightly power cuts that plague everyone in Soviet Russia? “Act Nice and Gentle” conveys the philosophy of the Communist lifestyle — but does the KGB know that this gorgeous song was originally written by those capitalist pigs, the Kinks? The most surprising part of the album is the revolutionary tone of the closer, “Till I Get My Way.” The guitar crackles with a life of its own. Fuzzed-out but not drowned out, The Black Keys will rock until the revolution.

In case the authorities ever decide to pull “Rubber Factory” from the shelves of your local cantina, you should get your frostbitten hands on a copy of 2002’s “The Big Come Up” or 2003’s follow-up “Thickfreakness.” The Black Keys’ debut album will blast the ice off your roof with balls-to-the-wall blues rock such as “Do the Rump” and “Heavy Soul.” The guitar lick on “The Breaks” is honestly one of the greatest I have ever heard, oozing a cool that will sneak its way into your bloodstream. Armed with compelling songwriting and a spirit that cannot be extinguished, The Black Keys shall lead us to the promised land; klasni in any language.