Since emerging in the late 2010s, hyperpop duo
100 gecs' sound has been somewhere between pop and panic attack, chaotically combining the most extreme versions of multiple styles and then speeding everything up to near breaking points. It's fun, funny, knowingly and brazenly ridiculous music and would be easy to write off as simple obnoxious experimentalism if the songs weren't so fantastically catchy. Their 2019 debut
1000 Gecs sounded like club bangers made by psychedelic cartoon characters, and sophomore LP
10,000 Gecs (a "long-player" in name alone as its ten songs clip by in just under 27 minutes) expands the duo's cultural collaging to include cannibalizations of
Limp Bizkit-style nu-metal, pop-punk, '90s alt-funk, ska, and anything else that captures the
gecs' fleeting attention. "Hollywood Baby" sounds like
blink-182 with the entire mix filtered through Auto-Tune, but the 8-bit feel somehow enhances the impact of the song's hooks. The album quickly detours between legitimately strong blasts of energy like the slap-bass weirdness of "Doritos & Fritos" or the computerized thrash metal of "One Million Dollars" to goofy
Kidz Bop childishness like "Frog on the Floor" or the third wave ska send-up "I Got My Tooth Removed." Somehow
100 gecs take things even more over the top on
10,000 Gecs than they did on their already mind-boggling debut. The very nature of the group's hyperbolic and perpetually exploding design means they're still inherently polarizing, love-it-or-hate-it kind of music. For those who love it,
10,000 Gecs offers more -- so much more, always more -- to love. ~ Fred Thomas
