NORMS - s/t 7"

A Hungarian (Budapest) quartet made up of three guys and one gal, Norms’ vinyl debut is a nine-minute, fifty-seven second, five-song lesson in the type of new music for which “hardcore” can be accurately attached. By the looks of the pic on the back cover, these folks might be too young to have participated in real-time immersion in the crust-core/d-beat/power-violence/grind-this/grind-that/heavier-than-fuck free-for-all wild-west heyday of ‘90s hardcore, but there’s no doubt some retroactive appreciation and proper updating at hand here. The four tracks that lead up to the hidden one are an explosive, blurry shit-spray that veers into collapsible chaos a handful of times. Mid-tempo at its slowest, a tempo unknown at its fastest, the first 7:22 of the EP - “Tomeg,” “Happiness,” “Time,” and “Minden Jo” – never venture into the metal flirtations of their forefathers, preferring harsh guitar sheets and a vocals-up-front scream-sing that finally devolves into a stretch of noise (feedback).