DESCENDENTS
Hypercaffium Spazzinate

A few months had passed since I had graduated, very disappointed, in 2008. What I will never forget is that period of isolation and deafening silence, a vortex that had swallowed me and invisible chains that kept me immobile in front of life. I was left with an old mp3 player, some earphones, and a green little park where I spent most of my afternoons. I felt misunderstood, invisible to the World, abandoned by everyone, and with no prospects for the future.

I remember that at the time I had been intensely longing for an ADSL connection which could help me satisfy my insatiable thirst for music. So, I tried to improvise as best as I could, and thanks to a friend who sent me music-filled CDs by mail, I discovered Descendents for the first time. It wasn’t long before “Hope” with its lyrics became one of the songs of my life and “Milo Goes To The College” one of my favorite albums.

I have always had an almost intuitive fondness for the Californians from Lomita. I could say it was almost instinctive. Certainly, the persona and history of the leader Milo Auckerman influenced this, in many aspects I saw myself in him: the nerdy and bespectacled student that girls didn’t notice, who vented all his anger by screaming into the microphone.
And then there’s that quirky yet endearing name. A name that as a kid subjected me to a lot of teasing because of a famous Japanese anime that tsar Ivan Zaytsev must have watched repeatedly.

Apart from this ideal closeness, it must be said that I have always preferred American hardcore, its speed, its roughness, its melody, but especially in many instances its attitudinal intelligence, the answer to the no future perspective beyond the Ocean.
And Milo’s story, now an established biologist, married and a father, shows that punk can also be brains and positive anger and is the exact opposite of the nihilism and self-destruction of a punk with a Mohawk who uses drugs. It’s the story of someone who fought, wallowed in the mud but today, despite everything, is still alive.

Returning to Descendents, we could say that today things have changed and music is not the main concern of the band members, but then again, would it really make sense to continuously churn out records? Probably not.
Yet if you take away a more polished production in line with the times, it seems that the clock has stopped over the last thirty years, the images crystallized on those faces, on those stages, on those sunny suburbs full of torn posters. Unlike some bands today which have appropriated the lesson taught by the Californians only to quickly discard it.

Next to the bespectacled frontman is always the loyal and historic helmsman Bill Stevenson, accompanied by Egerton and Alvarez who joined the band in the mid-eighties. We thus have an already established lineup that has been playing together since “All” (1987).
What has always fascinated me about Descendents is that melodic and romantic vein that has never faltered from 1982 to today (“Enjoy” partially excluded) and with “Without Love” here they are once again proving it to us. On the other hand, Descendents have also always been irrationality and short bursts of hardcore adrenaline of which we have several demonstrations here. It has always been like this, two halves that complete each other. “Limiter,” “Feel This,” “Shameless Halo,” “No Fat Burger,” and “Spineless and Red Scarlet” coexist well together and integrate.

Like Descendents’ music, I too am a mix of different things, with a common denominator represented by an underlying realism that sometimes dips into pessimism. But I also have a goofy laugh that sometimes manages to make me quite cheerful, at least on the outside.

Life is shit, man among all animals is the only one endowed with intellect and is destined to suffer due to his precarious condition.
This does not negate the fact that exactly when everything goes wrong, one must embrace as secularly as possible those feelings of hope and anger to reconnect the threads to reclaim something that rightfully belongs to us in an inalienable way, however finite its dimension: life.

And so maybe after so many beatings, punches, sunrises, sunsets, and storms, just like the pimply guy from yesterday sang, your day will come and whether it's graduation, the girl you're in love with reciprocating, or a long-desired promotion, it doesn’t matter much.

Meanwhile, Milo continued to fight, got out of the house, grew up, and truly went to college. That Milo is me.