Enjoy

There are no shortage of things to talk about when looking back on this record. It certainly wasn’t entirely well-received at the point of release, for a start. People were perfectly happy to be critical of the puerility of some of the subject matter (and in the case of “Orgofart”, the literal content as well), the heavy metal influences on tracks like “Hurtin’ Crue” and “Orgo 51”, the fact that one of the best songs on it is a Beach Boys cover, the dark expansiveness of “Days are Blood” and plenty more things besides. Basically, a lot of people wanted more of the same that they got on 1985’s I Don’t Want To Grow Up. Yet ironically, when that unwillingness to grow up manifests itself in references to shitting and farting, extending to the album artwork and lyrics alike, I guess some people felt that it cheapened the message of ‘not growing up’ and it’s kind of hard to argue listening to the record now.

 There are still plenty of amazing tracks which are closer to the classic Descendents template if you’re not into the more experimental (or scatological) stuff. And although the main talking point is still that there seems to have been a bit of a departure stylistically/thematically, I think you could still make a good argument for “Sour Grapes”, “Get The Time”, “Cheer”, “Green” and “Wendy” being absolutely essential Descendents listening. There are points during this record that are exactly what I want from Bill, Milo and co. and given it’s their third record, people being down on their trying some different things seems unfair. Maybe they don’t all work, but experimentation is rarely a bad thing.