Nobody in entertainment has a (split) personality like Eminem— the Trickster, the Sinner, the Demon. He’s like a stacked deck of Tarot cards, and he’s got nothing for you but bad, bad news. And maybe a hard taco. If you’re lucky.

And now a genuinely interesting new face in the deck: the Addict. It’s a story he’s been living for some time, and seems eager to confess. The opening skit of Relapse has Eminem talking to a doctor one last time before re-entering society (both literally and figuratively) after a stint in rehab. He’s fighting drug addiction. Which drugs? All of them, apparently. As the conversation continues and he talks about his anxiety, his desire to reform and to resist temptations he knows are out there, the doctor scoffs. Calls him a baby. Tells him a drink now and then is no big deal. Eminem quickly finds this is an exit interview with the Devil, only there’s no exit.

There’s dark humor in finding the rug pulled out from under you just as you think you’ve hit bottom. For my money, Eminem’s dysfunction has always been the most interesting in rap— while wearing his whiteness like Ahab’s whale he embraced his dark side and became something like a poltergeist, a smiling fiend (a theme explored in the dramatic last track, “Underground”). He’s an opportunist that preys on pain and gives voice to just about every vile thought that skitters across his mind. Relapse tries to present Eminem as both the victim and the antagonist, and it’s a pretty neat trick when it works. But while his pill addiction pops up everywhere on the album, it might not be the most troublesome addiction to be found on Relapse: how about his need to try and shock you like he used to? The need to slip into that familiar routine of uttering the unutterable, simply to prove he can?

Oh, it’s definitely a moneymaker. You will always stay on the radar if you deny the urge to censor yourself, and Eminem doesn’t seem to have any problem there: rape, abuse, murder; he uses them like vowels. Fictional atrocities are piled as high and deep as ever, though at times he feels like a shark in the shallow end of the pool. I mean, picking on Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Nick Cannon? Weak prey. Maybe that’s the point. In all his blood-drenched reveries, Eminem’s never going toe-to-toe with someone who can stand up to him. He even acknowledges it in yet another (hilarious– yes, I’m guilty) skewering of the now deceased Christopher Reeve, who says from the grave in “Medicine Ball” what a lot of us are thinking: “You’re taking this shit too far.”

When Eminem switches gears and takes on the mantle of the Sinner—surfacing from the nightmare and talking about his problems in real terms— it makes for compelling listening. “Déjà vu” is that kind of song, and in dealing with the real world it gives weight and complexity to the horror show. When it seems he’s staying in safe waters, working this familiar old routine rather than challenging himself, that’s when his commitment to the act really sells it again: he pulls no punches. Not one.

But still: when he drops the act and talks like a human being we could possibly relate to, he falls a little short. He says he hates the state of the game since his absence but he doesn’t name names—why the restraint? Let’s see those famous guns blaze. Likewise, there’s a liner note that dedicates the record to his slain D12 compadre and best friend, Proof (DeShaun Holton). Eminem writes to Proof in the liner that he wasn’t able to approach the subject of his death in a song. Pardon my insensitivity, but why the hell not? Why sidestep what’s painful when time and time again we’ve seen that pain is Eminem’s fuel and fire? Why not undertake the challenge? It makes me wonder how much stock to put into Eminem’s “honest” moments if we get IOUs for those difficult (and potentially most interesting) songs.

Seven paragraphs in, and barely any mention of how good the album actually is— that’s probably his true gift. He’s an irregularity that’s hard to see around, a devouring force, a linguistic terror that doesn’t fit anywhere but in his own skin— and barely there. It’s a good album— smooth, funny, horrific and dense. He hasn’t missed a beat in his four-year absence, which is an eternity in rap years. There’s nary a guest appearance by anyone except a handful of verses by Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. The result is something that feels charged and determined, another screaming freefall down into the most famously scarred psyche this side of…well, Britney and Lindsay, I guess. It’s certainly a better album than his last effort, Encore, by leaps and bounds; the only thing keeping it from greatness is that by now the audience is as comfortably numb as Eminem himself was, wonked out in the back of that car with a bag of Three Musketeers bars (and maybe he knows it– see “Same Song and Dance”). Is there a bottom to the hole? How do you keep shocking the unshockable?

You do the unexpected— and he hasn’t quite figured that out. Not yet, anyway.