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Screaming Females

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Location: New Brunswick, NJ

Websites:

• http://myspace.com/screamingfemales
• http://screamingfemales.com/

Bio: Screaming Females are one of those bands. The force-of-nature kind that only comes around once in a blue moon. The kind that blows minds; changes ... (more) lives, the kind that re-ignites and redefines what music means to those whose faith may have waned in the most fundamental of ways.

The band—guitarist/singer Marissa Paternoster, drummer Jarrett Dougherty and bassist King Mike—live and breath their hometown of New Brunswick, NJ, and are possessed of the ethos, drive, and spirit that has made the punk greats great during a time when fewer and fewer artists have the gumption to operate as such. Since their 2006 inception, the band have self-released two full-lengths and one 7", contributed songs to two splits, and self-booked over 260 shows, scoring a mass of critical praise and accruing throngs of devotees along the way with both their recorded output and devastating live shows. As their legend grew to epic proportions, Screaming Females were approached by many labels and various industry crackerjacks. All were denied—until 2008, when the band signed to the one label that mirrored their values and championed their hometown, Don Giovanni Records. Now, with their third and most scorching full-length (aptly titled Power Move) in the bag, Screaming Females are poised more than ever to do what they do best, on their own terms, their way.

Power Move is Screaming Females at the top of their game—Paternoster, heralded already as the principal delegate for this era's "new generation of femme shredders", as renowned writer Jessica Hopper noted in the Chicago Reader, is at her bombastic best, firing off gritty, urgent solos and spitting radical magic into the mic that builds upon the oeuvre of those before her (Patti Smith, Corin Tucker, Iggy Pop) and will undoubtedly inform those after her. The rhythm of it all, the rooty grooves and dub notes and post-dance beats laid down by Dougherty and Mike, are iron-strong roller coaster tracks upon which the train careens forwards. A further Hopper assertion: "I don't think anything like her has happened to punk before, and I'm glad it finally has"—the band happens to you; you can't un-hear them, their is no going back to your pre-Screaming Females self. (less)