Remember hardcore? Before everyone was wearing hats? Using the phrase 2 stepping? Being commanded to "side to side" by a guy wearing glasses? Before ill informed zines framed by black and white brick walls? Vaping and Door Dash?

EKGs don't, and they don't care. Meth head goldfish attention span song lengths backed with pure hardcore velocity, EKG's provide a real deal hardcore situation that only Pittsburgh could produce. Music straight from fucking hell performed by people under the age of 40.

Our take: Kill Enemy Records—the label behind Speed Plans and Illiterates, among many others—brings us the demo tape from this new Pittsburgh band. Like most of the other bands on Kill Enemy, EKGs play fast and hard, but definitely have their own spin on things. Their songs are mega short (most around one minute or less) and while they use a lot of blast beats, they’re not the slicked-up triggered kind, but the raw and punk-sounding kind that will remind you of Siege, Deep Wound, or Scum-era Napalm Death. The song structures are jagged and linear (rather than circular), rarely hanging on a riff or a part long enough to sink in… this is a band that likes to blindside you with a riff or a tempo change from the opposite direction as soon as you get comfortable. The vocals are really distinctive, in the Damaged-era Rollins school of outward manifestations of existential pain, but with a unique timbre. After 9 short rippers, the demo ends with two longer songs that feel even more like children of Damaged, including the closing singalong of “Permission to Cum,” which shifts the demo’s vibe slightly in an interesting way. EKGs are super fast, super raw, and super punk, but they also have a unique thing going on this demo that’s just bursting with ideas. Killer.