When pop-punk revivalists like Machine Gun Kelly (“Mainstream Sellout”) or Olivia Rodrigo (“SOUR”) poke at Gen-X nostalgia, they provoke criticism about their authenticity, whether they are “true pop-punk” and whether pop-punk itself is “true punk.” So what does being punk mean in 2023? Does it even matter? 

Enter the enigmatic hyperpop icons, Dylan Brady and Laura Les, together known as 100 gecs (“Snake Eyes”). On their new album “10,000 gecs,” the duo takes up the pop-punk sound, despite them being too experimental to be pop and too digital to be punk. The duo defines punk by its intentional sloppiness and its unwillingness to conform to major label standards. This and a noisy guitar: for 100 gecs, the difference between ska and thrash metal is how much compression you add. By this metric, the album amplifies punk as if Napster still exists and Limp Bizkit (“Still Sucks”) is still relevant enough to mock. 

100 gecs is not new to rock music. Their debut includes the death metal pastiche “800 db cloud” and the ska-punk banger “stupid horse.” The companion remix album even features contributions from Fall Out Boy (“So Much (for) Stardust”) and Black Dresses (“Forget Your Own Face”). But while those tracks seem like dabbles in rock, tracks like “Dumbest Girl Alive,” “Doritos and Fritos” and “I Got My Tooth Removed” are full dives into guitar music. 

The duo focusing their sound does not mean they forgo their trademark unpredictability. The album opens with the iconic THX “Deep Note”; the interlude “One Million Dollars” sounds like they took radio commercials for the lottery and distorted them into glitchy dubstep; “Frog On The Floor” sounds like it is originally by the Wiggles (“Ready, Steady, Wiggle!”).

That Limp Bizkit quip was not a joke. “Billy Knows Jamie” is 100 gecs deconstructing nu-metal and reconstructing it into a noisy murder ballad. Jamie wants exact revenge against whoever killed his friend Billy (presumably the same dead Billy from their EP track “Hey Big Man”). Brady raps simple bars with an MC Ride impression on the chorus: “Jamie go loco, Jamie on the juice/Jamie kinda scary when they lookin’ at you.” Les’ heavy guitar sounds like Jamie traded his gun for a chainsaw. Cashmere Cat (“Princess Catgirl”) features as a turntablist under the name “DJ Final,” adding that final touch of Y2K cheese. 

“The Most Wanted Person In The United States” is the chillest track on the album, if that means anything. Under a fuzzy bass backed by cartoon sound effects, the duo apathetically rap about killing “Bobby” and scramming off in a getaway car. It is at this point in the album that a story unfolds, one where that “One Million Dollars” interlude might have been Jamie’s bail. Les’ braggadocio lends itself to the funniest line on the album, about emasculating Anthony Kiedis.

100 gecs titles their albums exponentially: their debut EP is “100 gecs,” their debut album was “1000 gecs” and of course here we are now. In theory, as the gecs progress, we learn more about what “gec” really means, or atleast what “gec” develops into. If “10,000 gecs” is indeed ten times the “gec” as their debut, “1000 gecs,” then Brady and Les reveal themselves to be time travelers. The new album plays a balancing act between throwback alt-rock and futurist hyperpop, between reenacting Gen-X bro-core and appealing to their largely queer Gen-Z fanbase. 

Photo via 100 gecs via Spotify