LP reviewed in Sounds, 27th March, 1982
CHRON GEN | ‘Chronic Generation’ (Secret SEC 3) *** I WAS expecting a whole lot more from this album because I know Chron Gen are capable of a whole lot more.
It isn’t the depressing fact that a fan will have five (out of 12) of these tracks already. Mostly it’s the way the whole album feels ‘thrown together’ without care and effort; the way good ideas are half-formed and good songs rendered average; the way the band don’t push themselves to the limit, preferring to sit back smug rather than strain at the leash to get across to you.
The dynamic face of rebel youth music this ain’t. The sound like they couldn’t give a toss. Above all they sound TIRED. Just listen to the way the title track drags.
Chief offender is the back-seat drumming, which, when coupled to a leaden production, a weedy mix, no-effort two note guitar solos and trite lyrics, spells ORDINARY.
Okay, we could put up with ‘Jet Boy’ as a one off the wrist joke song, but only because we were expecting ‘the real thing’ on the album. What do we get? Drug songs. And the wrong sort of drugs to boot. There’s lead in them thar pills.
Chron Gen | Chronic Generation | (Secret) 1982
And, gee, like wow, man, ‘LSD’! Do us a favour. The whole tone of the album aims down, it sells itself short. It seems to be saying, look at me, I’m a punk, / gob.
More positively the debut EP said, look at me, I’m a punk, / think! Listen to side one’s gem ‘You Make Me Spew’. That’s Sid Snot talk, Glynn. Is that all you think you’re worth? Careless lyrics and garbled vocals compound the impression of gumbie punk, a sad status for a band who once promised so much.
Sure I’ll get angry letters saying how Chron Gen were one of the main bands keeping punk alive etc etc. But now the band have got to decide whether they just want to go through the motions or aspire to greatness. The choice is in their hands, and if they don’t make the right one they’ll end up in the dustbin of history cos there’s a hell of a lot of good competition.
Any punk band today who don’t aspire to create something of lasting value might as well not bother. (Garry Bushell)
IF YOU reckon something’s alive, challenging and relevant because there’s lots of people running around and doing it, then punk, whatever the dear old concept means these days, is more alive than ever.
But I’d argue (and not for the first time) that the punky compositions to be ploughed through on these four stubborn albums are mostly content to describe again and again nowt but a desperate state of spiritual death.
So much of the frantic stuff just adds up to a depressing bellow of bravado at a vaguely identified, monolithic kind of foe, that, sadly, will not give a toss, even if it’s listening.
If the predominant drift of these various twigs from the gnarled old oak of ’77 , somehow defines the ’cause’ we occasionally hear of, then its exponents had best take a crash course in the accommodating process by which Ye Septic System handles its ‘deviants’.
The establishment happily makes a little space for its drop-outs; it maintains the trumpetted myth of tolerance, free expression, blah, blah. If a bunch of ritually self-ravaged youths posed any threat at all, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it.
‘Punks’, or any non-conformist lot with no philosophy of change, interest the State only as social bricks for the construction of the odd moral panic.
We’re having one right now! Trot out some meaningless ‘crime statistics’ (hahahaha!) in a suitably contorted form, blow the odd fanfare, and suddenly, a nation boards up its windows and vows never to doubt the police force again.
Music is the object of real political action only when it forms the cultural tip of an articulate, unified, dissenting iceberg. As a thing on its own, music can only express some segment of the world and remould it as a tool for emotional expression.
It’s no substitute for the real political business, and just looks daft when it pretends. Excuse me while I negotiate the pulpit steps . . . All this means that Chron Gen are the most suss of this bunch, if only by mistake.
Their music is anaemic, sexless, soulless and numbingly dull, their lyrics keen but tediously literal. Chron Gen, though, are telling a truth which they can carry with credibility; this truth being that basically the punk tribe is just there, another degenerate lifestyle based on things as peripheral as music and drugs; a gutter club for anti-heroes.
A pretty exclusive one too, it turns out. Chron Gen’s title tune goes like this: “I’m a member of the chronic generation/It’s getting me nowhere, it’s full of complications”. It’s the only time they say they want out. The rest of the songs are excited tales of scuffles with Stray Cat fans, what fun it is to mince your mind with pharmaceuticals, how stupid (but mostly how voyeuristically thrilling) fights at gigs are, and how much they dislike people who aren’t like them.
‘You’ll Never Change Me’ is one of their cockiest songs. I couldn’t agree more. Chron Gen aren’t complaining at all. (NME, 10/04/82)
CHRON GEN: ‘Chronic Generation’ (Secret SEC 3) by Winston Smith ITS SO frustrating listening to ‘Chronic Generation’. It’s frustrating because Chron Gen are special, quite definitely special, and their appetisingly great talent is, it seems, going to waste.
The production, the lyrics, the overall impact of the album, don’t do anything like justice to the brilliantly pop-conscious punk melodiousness of Chron Gen’s music, and that’s the annoying thing.
If only they could write some decent lyrics and grow out of their: ‘We’re such boisterous, shocking, swearing, punk rockers’ hang up. If only they could polish up, turn up, and crispen their guitar and drum sound, then Chron Gen could produce something very very special.
But come on, in all seriousness lyrics like ’15 of you and only four of us, you still have to use an iron bar’. (‘Rockabill’) and the unbelievably sexist ‘You look like some old whore that’s Just come out of Soho’, (‘You Make Me Spew’) aren’t exactly to be savoured are they?
And what makes matters worse is that for once, you can hear the words, it’s all so painfully clear!
Chron Gen are a potentially great bend. Their fusing of traditional punk onslaught with attractive pop pleasure tones could become something to treasure, if they give it the chance to burst through into the light of day.
Instead they leave It simmering away below boiling point, never quite bubbling over. For now, this will have to do, and it’s so frustrating . . . + + + + (Record Mirror, 17/04/82)
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