The Gits

The Gits

Seafish Louisville (Broken Rekids)

Of all the Pacific Northwest riot grrrl bands of the Nineties (7 Year Bitch, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney), perhaps the best was the one with three guys, Seattle's Gits. Three guys and one hellion of a singer named Mia Zapata. Raped and strangled while the band recorded its second full-length, 1994's screaming Enter: The Conquering Chicken, Zapata was the very definition of "riot grrrl" -- too much woman for anyone but the punk rock faithful to handle. Passionate, pissed-off, disarming, she was L7 all rolled into one. Tragically, the better part of a decade later, Zapata has become rock & roll's martyred poster child for violence against women, the impetus behind anti-violence collective Home Alive (www.homealive.org), as her killer has never been caught. Seafish Louisville, the third posthumous disc lovingly assembled by Zapata's surviving bandmates (there's also Kings and Queens), not only rages with Zapata's blistering spirit, it serves as potent reminder why emptying an act's archives piece by piece is sometimes necessary: It keeps the artists' eternal flame burning. Composed of the Gits' little-heard first EP (remastered, of course), three previously unreleased studio tracks, and a 1992 live set caught on film for Seattle music-scene documentary Hype, Seafish Louisville is an expertly sequenced document of the band at its best. Slashing openerrr "Whirlwind," alternately marching and galloping, the raw, merciless "Precious Blood," and driving instrumental closer "Daily Bread" attain well-deserved liberation from the vaults, while the disc's 10 live tracks, almost all off the Gits' scabrous first album, 1992's Frenching the Bully, gnash and claw with the band's post-metal hardcore attack. The trio of tunes from the EP are seamlessly worked in to lend Seafish Louisville an overall cohesiveness normally reserved for newly recorded and released albums. If that makes Mia Zapata's death all the more horrible and depressing, in this case pain and punk rock are one and the same.