Enter: The Conquering Chicken

Originally released on C/Z Records in 1993 and remixed by Jack Endino for Broken Rekids, Enter: The Conquering Chicken is a landmark of gritty and aggressive female-fronted rock & roll. Singer Mia Zapata emerged from a different school of rock than Kathleen Hanna and Corin Tucker, one that found contemporaries in L7, the Lunachicks, and Hole and has led to bands like the Distillers. There's a Pacific Northwestern gloom to guitarist Joe Spleen's music, whether in SST-styled punk numbers like "Bob (Cousin O.)" or the cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" (where Zapata sounds a lot like Neko Case), but there's still enough room for a goofy punk singalong like the hilarious "Italian Song." The goofball tracks are filler, of course, but knowing that they were necessitated by Zapata's absence -- due to her brutal murder -- lends them a more profound sense of levity, as Zapata was the soul of the Gits. You can tell by the charismatic way she carries a song -- her vocals are always impassioned and reach from the rage of Live Through This-era Courtney Love to Pearl Jam-worthy crooning ("Precious Blood"). Like the reissue of the band's debut, Frenching the Bully, this record includes a seven-song live show, and from the sweltering version of "Crab" on, the live material seems to capture an intensity at the heart of the Gits' identity that was never quite achieved in the studio material. ~ Charles Spano, Rovi