Perspective is everything, even though many North Americans never realize that. Drummer Bill Stevenson—whose tenures with Descendents, Black Flag, and All have made him punk-rock royalty—is one of the lucky ones.

As fans might deduce from the lyrics on Descendents’ successful 2016 comeback album Hypercaffium Spazzinate, there’ve been some challenging times for members of the veteran punk band in recent years. Nowhere is the turmoil more evident than on “Smile”, where singer Milo Aukerman clocks in with “I can see your pain has left you locked up, beat down/I can see the fear has made you desperate, burnt out/Too much regret and shattered hope/Sent you slipping down that slope.”

Reached at home in Fort Collins, Colorado, Stevenson acknowledges that the song was very much written for him and about him.

In recent years the 53-year-old has survived a series of major health scares, including but not limited to a massive brain tumour, a pulmonary embolism, and significant blood clots in his lungs that cut his oxygen intake to 50 percent of a healthy person’s. With Descendents often inactive after 2004’s Cool to Be You, Stevenson found himself devoting most of his time to his other job: producing other bands at the Blasting Room, the studio he co-owns and runs in Fort Collins. Sitting in front of a recording console is nowhere near as physically demanding as playing the drums for a couple of hours a day, which probably contributed to him eventually hitting 400 pounds.

All this would be mentally taxing on anyone. Famously upbeat though he is, Stevenson was no exception. And eventually those around him began to see that something was wrong.

“I’ll tell you about ‘Smile’,” Stevenson says openly. “When Milo sent me the demo for it, and told me it was about me, I remember kind of going, ‘Hey, easy, guy. I’m fine.’ But the thing about a true best friend is that he was able to see things that were going on with me that I could not yet see. Really, the big thing was that I was kind of in a dark place. That sounds really cliché, and I don’t even really know how to say it, but I guess maybe I was feeling like a failure in some way.”

As folks often do when the black clouds of self-doubt roll in, Stevenson began looking for ways to cope, and the bottle provided a crutch for a while. But eventually, as his various health problems were straightened out, he was able to see the absurdity in his self-pity, inspiring Hypercaffium Spazzinate offerings like “Victim of Me”. A four-on-the-floor shot of classic Descendents punk-scorched pop, the song features lines like “Complain about everything in my life/And blame everybody I know/I make every decision laced in panic/Regrettable but I know it’s amendable.”

That’s one of the many moments on Hypercaffium Spazzinate inspired by real-life events among band members. Over the course of 16 mostly triple-caffeinated tracks, the band deals with everything from family deaths (“Feel This”) to in-the-red cholesterol readings (“No Fat Burger”) to raising children in a world where Ritalin is pushed on kids like Smarties (“Limiter”).

Stevenson says “Victim of Me” stemmed from a night out with a friend—the doctor who had admitted him months earlier when he came into the hospital on a gurney during one of his big health scares.

“We were shooting pool and both had to take a leak,” he recounts. “We’re lined up at the urinal, and I’m grumbling about this or that. He’s at the urinal next to me when he turns and goes, ‘Dude—you’re the victim of you.’ I thought about it later that night and I was like, ‘I am the victim of me.’ ”

Having come through a rough patch, Stevenson figures whatever problems he had paled next to what less fortunate people on this planet are going through.

“It’s rich people’s problems,” he argues. “They are not real problems. I totally believe that, even after having a little brush with depression. And right now I feel great—I don’t have any complaints in my life, whether they be medical, psychological, physical, or otherwise.”

That lust for life shines through big-time on Hypercaffium Spazzinate, which ended up the highest-charting record in Descendents’ long career. The album hit No. 20 on the Billboard charts, an accomplishment that was flat-out unfathomable back when Aukerman and Stevenson were writing hardcore blitzkriegs like­ “Weinerschnitzel” and “I Like Food” that burned out in under 20 seconds.

What’s most noticeable is that Hypercaffium Spazzinate sounds like the work of a band that’s not only totally recharged, but—in a geniune punk-rock rarity—every bit as relevant as it was during its initial run in the ’80s.

For much of this century, the members of Descendents were busy with other pursuits, including raising families. Aukerman, as is well-known, was a successful scientist, working in the biochemistry division at DuPont as well as teaching at the University of Delaware. Admirably refusing to grow up, bassist Karl Alvarez toured steadily with bands ranging from Gogol Bordello to the Real McKenzies and dabbled in painting. Guitarist Stephen Egerton has raised two kids with his wife in Tulsa, where he’s concentrated on recording bands at his Armstrong Studios.

Given everything that’s been going on in the personal lives of Descendents’ members, Stevenson says it’s no accident that Hypercaffium Spazzinate ended up being so strong. The best thing that ever happened to the band is that no one had to write a record or pile into a tour van simply because there were bills to pay.

“We’ve found a correct amount of time to spend doing this,” Stevenson says. “In other words, we don’t let it become a job. It’s still based on fun. Even the way we’re touring is fun. If you look at our tour dates you’re probably thinking, ‘Oh, those guys are out there in the van at age 55.’ But it’s a little misleading. If it’s an overseas thing, we’ll go out for about two weeks. But if it’s a U.S. thing, what we’re doing is flying in on a Thursday night, playing Friday and Saturday in a couple of cities, and then flying home Monday.

“And we don’t do it every week,” he continues. “So for us the band is almost like a little vacation thing whenever we fly out. We live in different states, so we get to hang out. The way we’re doing it is born of what the band itself was born of, which is fun and camaraderie.”

Except now there’s a bonus. Descendents have been embraced as true visionaries, their genius lauded by more famous icons ranging from Dave Grohl to Ian MacKaye. Although it would have been unthinkable back in the early years of grimy hall gigs and beer-soaked house parties, they draw crowds of thousands today, something that continues to amaze every member of the group.

Stevenson knows that he’s been blessed. And he knows that the same goes for his bandmates, who are also able to appreciate that; check out the love letter to each other that is “Beyond the Music” and its lyrics “And there’s nothing in this world/Not a dollar, dream or girl/That can rival what we have between us.”

Everything changes once you put things in perspective. That is something Stevenson has grown to have no shortage of.

“I have this theory, and of course it’s not true 100 percent of the time, but I feel that the bands that started for the right reasons are able to stay together longer,” he says. “As for bands that started simply to get popular or get famous or cool—those goals don’t carry you for 38 years. In the beginning it was us guys jamming in the garage together, convinced that there was never even the likelihood that we would get a show booked. And yet we still did it anyway. Because that was our first motivation, we don’t get let down very easily. Anything beyond that early joy of just being friends jamming has been icing.”

Descendents play the Commodore Ballroom on Thursday and Friday (August 24 and 25) as part of the Straight Series.