When I was in college in the early 1990s, I got swept up in the Riot Grrrl music movement despite the fact that I wasn’t female, Queer, or even female-presenting. Sure, I wore a skirt and a shit-ton of makeup to go out—but this was New York City and I was at my gothiest with nothing to lose outside of an occasional beat down after drunkenly mouthing off.
A close friend of mine, a women’s studies major, was all up in it, making fanzines, connecting with the bands’ biggest names and I was right there with her up at the stage’s edge. So while we were seeing Bratmobile and Bikini Kill in tiny rooms with sometimes scant crowds, the feeling that something big was about to happen permeated the scene.
Did anything happen? Hard to say for sure, because if it did, the hard pushback of a society not in college towns and urban centers met every advancement with an equally closed-minded shove back. I sense the legacy of Riot Grrrl continues in a whole wave of up-and-coming U.S.-based musical acts resisting oppression by having their voices heard. That defiant take is necessary and noble. Does it make for good songs? It depends on your tastes, obviously.
A band like Boone, North Carolina’s Babe Haven differs from the originators of their niche in that it leans harder into a post-metal sludge taken up by other early ’90s grunge successes. And though Babe Haven also uses that signature penchant for distorted lyrical threats, it’s grown to be much heavier, faster, tighter, and more rhythmically varied on its second record Nuisance (2024), eschewing the about-to-fall-apart performances that hindered its earliest singles.
Opener Slow Funeral, a four-piece platform for Spartanburg, South Carolina’s Mary Norris, steers a bit more pop-friendly but no less dangerous. See if the “Freak Bitch” (2025) or “Hanging” (2024) singles do it for you since their
presence should make for a complementary, satisfying ticket.—CM Gorey
CAUTION: The writer’s unrestrained cynicism and unresolved issues shape the writing of this opinion column. Results may vary.
