a seminal new wave synthpop album, "duty now for the future" was eventually heralded as one of the first pop/rock or aor releases of a major record label to rely heavily on synthesizers, which went on to be widely used in the subsequent new wave genre of the 1980s. as an offshoot of punk rock, new wave music had consisted primarily of guitar-based songs derived from traditional rock and roll and blues scales and riffs, as represented by devo's punk contemporaries the sex pistols, ramones and the clash.