Could it be that spastic hardcore’s days are numbered? Well, most certainly. But could it be that even the genre’s ADHD shock troops are seeing the end in sight? Perhaps. Some Girls, a side project that features members of manic-hardcore staples The Locust, Give Up The Ghost and Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, seems to indicate the bands that lead the screamo charge are discovering the inevitable cul-de-sac of their harder-faster-weirder aesthetic.

Heaven’s Pregnant Teens, the band’s Epitaph Records debut, doesn’t entirely abandon the tweaker-hardcore stomping grounds that nurtured the band’s members (and most of Some Girls’ own catalog), but it certainly forces a handful of Ritalin down each member’s throat before each song begins. Flipping between post-hardcore meltdowns and more post-punk- and punk-influenced tunes, Some Girls find new depths and directions to their frothy temper tantrums.

At times sounding like a supple braid of post-hardcore and post-punk riffs – Heaven’s Pregnant Teens owes as much to Year Future’s cold minimalism as The Locust’s Carbona-and-meth assault – Some Girls back off the throttle enough to make many of this album’s tracks bona fide songs rather than the napalm-blazing product of mischievous provocateurs. A cover of Public Image Ltd.’s “Religion,” with the original’s droning minimalism warped into shuddering pangs of dying guitars, and an uncharacteristically lengthy (13-minute) jam “Deathface,” which grinds through repetitive riffs long enough to give your ears a dual case of carpal tunnel and tinnitus, are the closest to convention Some Girls get. Other tracks, such as “Dead in a Web” and “Ex Nuns/Dead Dogs,” twist slower tempos around spazz-cake post-hardcore for slightly more conventional dynamics than you’d expect from this act. They’re baby steps out of the spazz-core formula, but huge steps for a band best known as an ostensibly irritating experiment.

Some Girls doesn’t quite ditch its screamo baggage on Heaven’s Pregnant Teens, as the bulk of the record revolves around manic-paced blitzkriegs of re-entry-scorched guitars and sweat-soaked spazz dynamics. Although not as abrasive as any of the Girls’ previous albums, they’re nonetheless dedicated to defending screamo’s spastic honor.

Some Girls won’t surprise anyone with their harder-faster stretches – that vein’s been hunted to extinction by a million screamo acts in the past five years – but a few punk-influenced curveballs here and there ought to tweak the nose of the spazz-rock establishment.