Quasi-unipotency is a well defined notion at any point of the discriminant. If we have a proper family $f : X \to S$ of varieties with a smooth total space and a smooth base, and if $p \in D \subset S$ is a point of the discriminant, then we say that the local monodromy of the family near $p$ is quasi-unipotent if we can find a small analytic neighborhood $p \in U \subset S$ of $p$ in $S$, so that if $o \in U - D$ is a base point, then the monodromy representation '$mon : \pi_{1}(U-D,o) \to GL(H^{i}(X_{o},\mathbb{C})$' has an image whose Zariski closure $G$ is a unipotentquasi-unipotent linear algebraic group (that is, the quotient of $G$ by its unipotent radical is a finite-group).
In general it is rare for the local monodromy to be quasi-unipotent. If $p$ happens to be a very singular point of the discriminant, then the local monodromy tends to be big and is often as big as it can be, and not quasi-unipotent at all. However, if $p$ is at worst a normal crossing singularity of $D$, then the local monodromy is quasi-unipotent.