Since their formation in 1978, Southern California’s Descendents have influenced an entire generation of punk rock.

While their early contemporaries in the hardcore scene focused on negative social issues in their lyrics and image, Descendents proudly represented what mattered to them: girls, coffee, being a nerd and everyday life. Fronted by biochemist Milo Aukerman, whose likeness appears as the band’s unofficial logo and mascot on the bulk of its releases, Descendents are back with their new album Hypercaffium Spazzinate – their first in 12 years.

Hypercaffium picks up where the band left off on 2004’s Cool To Be You, with ample time given to songwriting and avoiding the stresses of rushing out an album. “We started making it maybe a year and a half ago, and we basically finished it up in April or May this year,” says Aukerman.

“It was a long time coming and took us a while to synchronise our schedules. I think it’s something we all wanted to do and to help us play new music and shows. We try and play a lot of the new songs live. When we play in Europe next month, we want to play at least half the album live. It’s exciting to be playing new songs.”

After originally leaving the band in 1987 to pursue a career in science, Aukerman has balanced his working life with intermittent band commitments. Although he found stable employment in his field, the call of music appears to have finally won the battle.

“I was at a corporate science gig and it was starting to get a little miserable for me there,” he says. “They were putting me in positions I wasn’t that excited about. Basically the past few years now I’ve been thinking, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.’ It was really getting me down and then they laid me off. We were making the new record at the time, so the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was at the company for 15 years and I don’t see the need to go back to science anytime soon. It soured me on the whole research gig.

“We’ve been playing shows again since 2010, and since then I’ve been biding my time and waiting for an opportunity to cut ties with my job and get back to the band. It turns out the band is probably what I should have been doing all along. Despite my advanced age, I finally figured out what I really wanted to do. It’s the first time I’ve been in a band where I can basically say, ‘This is what I want to focus 100 per cent of my attention on,’ without having to dilute it with other interests such as science.”

Keeping a band together for over three decades is no easy task, but Aukerman credits the strength of the relationship with his bandmates – especially founding member and health-troubled drummer Bill Stevenson – with maintaining the energy and motivation.

“When I was working on my science career we had maybe lost contact to some degree, however Bill Stevenson and I go back to high school and I think the bond there is so strong that we can not see each other for months and even years and I can just give him a call anytime. It’s one of those never-ending constants in our lives where we have this bond with each other. Probably in the mid-2000s we weren’t in contact so much, but in 2009 when Bill had all these health issues we got back in touch. I realised that I might be losing my best friend. He eventually had all these surgeries and recovered, which reignited our friendship and the band as well.”

Descendents have always focused on relatable and real-world situations in their lyrics, with trademarks of being a social outcast and dealing with everyday frustrations. “We’re kind of married to this whole ‘documenting our lives’ kind of thing,” Aukerman says. “Bands write songs where they can just make up stories, but we can’t do that. We’re so focused on trying to document our own reality, which is all we can really do. I’m committed to trying to expand that palette to trying to delve deeper into my imagination, but as it stands we just write about our lives. We’ve got Bill who’s gone through health scares so there’s songs about that, plus songs about family issues and basically just things that directly affect us.

“We’re in a band together because we were these nerdy kids that wanted to vocalise our frustrations in high school. Now we vocalise frustrations about things that we’re currently dealing with, which obviously isn’t about high school, but no matter how old you are there’s always something you’ll be frustrated about.”

While decade-long gaps between albums and tours are often the telltale signs of a band lacking direction and determination, Aukerman is a believer in making use of a slower pace and extra time to Descendents’ advantage.

“Playing intermittently has meant that we’ve never burned out. It’s never been a drudgery and it’s never been a drag. Since we’re all fully back into it now, I think we could definitely put out another record in the next two or three years and maybe become more like a regular band that has a two- or three-year cycle between records and tour more often. We don’t do it because we have to, we do it because we want to, and that’s what keeps it fresh and keeps us enthusiastic about it.”

[Descendents photo by Kevin Scanlon]

Hypercaffium SpazzinatebyDescendents isout Friday July 29 through Epitaph.

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