Album review: Geriatric Unit – Distance And Damage

I’ll keep this short and to the point, because that’s exactly how Geriatric Unit keep their tunes. In fact, that’s how they keep the entirety of Distance and Damage – which may include an album-esque quota of twelve tunes, but manages to rattle through them all in well under quarter of an hour.

“Old-Fast-Loud!” reads the strapline on the rear sleeve of my review copy, and that just about sums it up. Geriatric Unit are a veteran supergroup of UK hardcore punk musicians – and when I say hardcore punk, I don’t mean the skinny-trousered haircut warriors who’ve reappropriated the term of late. Written and performed by former members of bands like Iron Monkey, Heresy and Hard to Swallow, Distance And Damage makes no concessions to fashion. And – unless you’re an aficionado of the sound already – it doesn’t make any concessions to accessibility either.

Indeed, Distance And Damage is the sound of older musicians who’ve come to accept their age (hence the band name, and songs like “Don’t Want To Be Young Again”) but who don’t see that as any reason to go back on the principles that hardcore was originally built upon. Geriatric Unit have all the channelled fury of a younger act, but tempered with the wisdom of experience.

For listeners not accustomed to the old hardcore style, it might be interesting to see Distance And Damage as capturing the sound that provides the link between punk and thrash metal: the frantic pace, driven by eighth-note snares; the simple direct lyrics, shrieked or bellowed or howled. Thrash took this template and added showy virtuosity and progressive arrangements, but Geriatric Unit are quite content with four chords, one chorus and a handful of verses per song, all hammered out at a BPM that would make a gabba DJ wince.

In short, Distance And Damage is not fun, friendly or fashionable… and I’m confident Geriatric Unit themselves would agree with me on all three counts, because they’ve quite deliberately made it that way. As such, the white-belts-and-box-fresh-hats brigade won’t be interested, but the hardcore of hardcore – the older guys who never let their ideals die – will hear this and itch for the push and shove of the pit. Stand well clear, or risk more than bruises.