Featured image credit: Starset – Degenerate (Official Visualizer)
Initially, I thought that this song was a look at the so-called “upper-crust” of society; the ones who think they’re better than us. The actual degenerates: the ultra-wealthy, uncaring lizard people. Humans who are just as imperfect as we are. It might be, because the “Official Visualizer” (above; which is an AI-generated video made with art from willing/paid artists) has historical figures like Abe Lincoln, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, George Washington, and the list goes on. But overall, after a few watches, I think the degenerates are humans in general. Because I mean, there’s even Gandhi driving a tank, 16 seconds in.
And I will be honest, when the towers of trash start rising from the oceans full of trash and it shows a sea lion looking up at the towers and then a polar bear, with their big innocent eyes, as he sings “we’re killing it the entire way” – my heart couldn’t take it and I straight up bawled. Especially since I wanted to be a marine biologist and that seems hopeless now (as of writing this, Herr Plugs has celebrated the dismantling of the Department of Education and NOAA is in the crosshairs).
It especially drives home the shitty world we live in when he sings to the visual of people greedily eating saucy hamburgers “wash it down,” in between shots of the ocean garbage towers “and annihilate”.
Honestly, the “Official Music Video” they released a month or so after the “Official Visualizer” makes less sense to me than the visualizer. They got flak for using AI, but I mean, honestly, every choice they make artistically, has a point.
To the music
Musically, this seems like the heaviest song of the four new ones, in my opinion. Ron is destroying that bass right alongside Brock and Adam and it sounds phenomenal. The bass is front and center throughout the song, with the exception of the bridge, which works well in contrast to the (what I assume are) keys there.
Honestly, the video destroyed me and I’m more depressed now than I was earlier. So, their messaging is effective.
Down, down, down, down, down,
It’s a race to the bottom
Ya got me, I’m there.
But this line makes sense. All this time, I knew the competition was fierce, I just never realized people were obsessed with being the worst person they could be. But power corrupts, so that makes complete sense to me now.
So hit ’em with a whole tidal wave
We’re killing it the entire way
We’ll wash it down and annihilate
And have yourself a nice doomsday
(Bending til we, bending til we break,
Degenerate)
Again, Dustin is basically (literally) screaming about us being the cause of our own destruction.
I feel like he’s twenty years too late. But, I mean, SOAD and RATM were screaming about the self-destructive and violent nature of humans twenty years ago, and it did nothing to deter us from the path we were apparently dead-set on being on.
Man, seeing Socrates (or Plato, I’m not sure which philosopher that is supposed to be) desperately clinging to a fast food paper bag is, to me, a comment on how nothing we could have done would have avoided this. Even though he is, like a lot of us, kind of a victim of our own consumerism. Humans don’t deserve this world – especially not the ones who we trusted to “protect” us. But that in itself is laziness and complacency in action (inaction), right?
I mean I love the calling out of things like the manufactured opioid epidemic that they just keep getting away with.
The subreddit wants to believe that we will have a new single drop soon, but I’m not sure if we will before the new album drops. The previous releases were each two months apart, and Dystopia was released on Nov. 7th, 2024. So, it would have stood to reason a new single would have released the first week of January 2025, but, we are heading into the second week of February with nary a single in sight.
I think that means we won’t see another until right before the album is released.
Anyway, speculation over.
I am destroyed. Right in the I-thought-Kamala-would-save-us.
I hope the deja-vu I experienced writing this turns into a full-blown aneurism.
Enjoy my liberal tears when your shit burns the fuck down, MAGA, cause it won’t be enough to save you, either.