Artist: Radium Grrrls
Apparently these tracks came out in 2019 but somehow slipped through my radar.
Up To No Good is Radium Grrrls’ second release—following their great Pro Choice EP on Adagio 830—in which they bring forth their explosive, matchstick-and-gasoline hardcore with a strong political connotation.
Hailing from the cities of Falun and Borlänge in Dalarna county of Sweden, the band’s name is a play on words between the female factory workers who suffered from irradiation in the 1920s and the punk’s own Riot Grrrl movement that started in the early 1990s.
Historically, the Radium Girls were brave working class women who fell ill or died of radiation poisoning, with bodies still glowing in their coffins. They were also women who organised themselves to fight the United States Radium Corporation with a groundbreaking impact on labour rights in the country. As you can expect from a band named like that, Radium Grrrls’ message is defiantly feminist, antifascist and queer-positive.
Rampaging and raucous in the veins of favorites of mine like Landverraad and Strafplanet, these seven tracks are filled with a genuine ferocity from start to finish. From the breathless vocal delivery and patriarchy-slaying message of singer Emilia Henriksson to the gut-wrenching, cascading guitar energy brought by the genius of Christoffer Öster (Totem Skin, Dödsrit), relentlessly pounding bass savagery of Andreas Bustad and machine-gun-throbbing skills of grindcore drummer par excellence Tord Simon Eriksson (Livet Som Insats), I really feel they’ve come into their own with this record. These seven intense tracks are too fast and short for a piece by piece review, but they immediately make you want to play them over again without getting bored. The lyrics are well-written and absolute fun to hear and read as well.
Furious, maladjusted, and utterly sick with the systems of oppression, Radium Grrrls are empowering and inspiring! Hope they have more stuff up their sleeves, because they totally rule.
