Kozmosz

Kozmosz from Budapest play modern punk with sweeping energy, obvious pop sensibility, open eyes and Hungarian lyrics that immediately sink in. Their music is rooted in American punk at the turn of the millennium, but they pay attention to what happened after the MTV era, and add influences from other genres to their no-frills approach.

As a punk band, it's natural for a band not to take itself too seriously, to play what it thinks is important on any stage, anywhere, and be unafraid of anything, and only write about what it genuinely cares about, whether it's politics, or the everyday party-induced bum and boobs - or the programme-announcing hit, World Excess, which is all of those things at once.

Kozmosz's lyrics are built of straightforward Hungarian phrases and well-timed images: the band considers itself lucky to have grown up at an equal distance from the boringly copied greats of Hungarian alternative music and the silly mainstream camouflage pop.

Dániel Beke (bass, vocals) and Zsombor Pál (rhythm guitar, vocals) grew up in Székesfehérvár, while Dávid Huszlicska (lead guitar) and Attila Veres (drums) hope that one day short, dark and unacceptably concrete streets will be named after them in Budaörs. The members have played together in various line-ups in previous punk bands from the outskirts of Budapest, and the foursome was formed in 2011.

The two singers had already been posting various household demos on the internet under the name Kozmos. Of these, N.E.R., which celebrated the inauguration of President Pál Schmitt in 2010 by singing the presidential autobiography, was an unexpected hit: the toast crossed the 100,000 mark on YouTube before the band's first proper rehearsal with a drummer had even taken place. As a trio, the group recorded a little-publicised three-song demo in early 2011, and then, with the addition of their lead guitarist, spent the year writing heavily and playing sporadic gigs.

The result was the six-track Land of the Clever EP, released in summer 2012, whose song "Világszakadtság" (World Debacle) immediately exploded: within a few weeks it had reached number one on the MR2-Petőfi Radio playlist, more and more radio stations were playing it regularly from across the border, and Kozmosz found themselves on the main stage of the summer closing SZIN in a few weeks instead of a cleverly timed festival season. World Preoccupation was followed by Revolution in the autumn.

The band is now working to get their album, which is making waves in the narrow punk scene and beyond the music press, and their live show, which is twice as big, to as many people as possible. In the autumn, they plan to make videos for almost every song, and in addition to the ever-expanding club gigs in Budapest, they want to play as many stages as possible across the country to forcefully put the world to rights with whatever splash they can get their hands on.