Our recent Scene Point Blank reader's poll told us at least two things about you, the reader: (1) you want to see less reviews of "generic hardcore", and (2) hardcore is your favorite genre. (If this doesn't apply to you, sorry; you should've chipped in!) So you love hardcore, but also hold high standards for it; maybe you're sick of bands that seem like they sat down before ever playing a note and decided exactly which Judge/Cro-Mags/Infest record they wanted to ape. Good deal - so am I.
But here I sit, writing a review of a retrospective discography entitled Generic Record Collection. You may have suspected that there's some amount of irony at work here: the band, after all, is called The Degenerics. Now, I haven't met many Degenerics fans, but the ones that I have met tend to talk about the band the same way that Christians talk about Jesus. And they usually explicitly point out how non-generic the Degenerics are: I've heard their full-length opus Generica praised as a mind-blowing, genre-hopping masterpiece worthy of The Clash or the Bad Brains at the height of their powers. And so the hype built and built, until I finally sat down and listened to the album.
Let me get the crotchety bastard part out of the way first: Generica is not nearly as musically diverse or wide-ranging as some of its partisans make it out to be. A reggae part and an acoustic passage or two do not a London Calling make. That said, Generica is a downright fantastic hardcore album.
The band has a very modern sound, almost like a more focused and ferocious Born Against, and it's nice to hear a hardcore band that doesn't sound like they crawled out of a time capsule. But what really sets the Degenerics apart are some very serious chops - the musicianship on this album is no joke. Normally, "chops" are the kind of thing that makes me roll my eyes, but I can't help but be impressed here. Generica actually reminds me a little of of Catch 22's awesome Keasbey Nights in how the Degenerics sublimate their honors band skills to focus on writing awesome punk rock songs instead of showing off. And despite countless guitar leads that I can only describe as blazing, the Degenerics never really sound like a metal band - although I wouldn't be surprised if these guys had a few metal records in their closets, because Generica plays almost like a punk rock counterpart to At The Gates' classic Slaughter of the Soul. And the minor-key guitar melodies on "Rising Sun Experience" remind of nothing so much as a Danny Elfman score. So maybe Generica's more diverse than I give it credit for after all.
But the real treat is how well everything else holds up, too. There are plenty of bands who release discographies featuring one or two totally essential records and some other crap you will never, ever listen to; see the Sairaat Mielet discography CD, a band whose wicked second 7" actually sounds more than a little like the Degenerics. But the non-LP material on Generic Record Collection is just as good as Generica, and sometimes even better: The Final Chapter EP ups the ante considerably, and the wonderfully melodic instrumental "Heaven" (from the No Comply 7") makes you wish the band had eased off the doom-and-gloom minor-key riffage and let the sun shine in more often.
In short, Generic Record Collection offers a great opportunity to revisit an outstanding hardcore band who went largely underappreciated in their own time. I'm not sure if the Degenerics are quite as revelatory as some of their most ardent converts claim, but that's okay - they're something of a national treasure nonetheless. And I even hear they're playing shows again, so now's a better time than ever to catch up.
