Review: Norma Jean – Meridional

Palmer reviews Norma Jean’s ‘Meridional’.

Artist: Norma Jean
Album: Meridional
Year: 2010
Genre: Hardcore

Formed in 1997, under the band name ‘Luti-Kriss’, Norma Jean have evolved from a cookie-cutter hardcore band into the beast of noise that they are now. Their last album, The Anti-Mother, left a lot of fans and critics with a bad taste, but Meridional challenges all that we know about Norma Jean and once again shows that they’re a force to be reckoned within the hardcore scene.

Norma Jean have changed their sound drastically over the years. They’ve stopped being heavy for the sake of being heavy, and have slowly begun to master the art of creating controlled chaos. That being said, first time listeners might find that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew with Norma Jean’s fifth studio album, and I admit, it takes a finely tuned ear to dig below the dissonance and appreciate what this band is doing.

From the very first track on, this new album is an all-out-assault on the psyche, with only a few melodic pauses here and there to allow the listener to take a breather and recover before the assault continues. With over-distorted, high-gain guitars; sandpaper vocals – wrought with raw emotion; raging drums; and a bass that sounds more like a charging bull than anything else, one can’t help but wonder where the appeal lies, right? Wrong. That, my friends, is found in the genius and the flow of the song structure. Everything just fits so beautifully, in most songs, that you can’t help but wonder why these guys haven’t tried to start a noise rock band.

However, that’s not to say that every song on this album is a masterpiece. There are definitely a couple songs that come across as forced, but even the Norma Jean garbage is better than most of the crap that the hardcore scene seems to pump out these days. All in all, while this album isn’t a flawless entry in Norma Jean’s catalogue, Meridional once again puts them amongst the very best in an increasingly convoluted scene.

Rating: 85/100

Best Tracks: ‘Leaderless And Self Enlisted’, ‘The Anthem Of Angry Brides’, ‘Falling From The Sky: Day Seven’ and ‘Everlasting Tapeworm’

Palmer Sturman
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