NITOCRIS: Screaming Dolorous

Produced by Mark Thomas, Liberty and Nitocris

Released: 1994

While a teenage band from Newcastle was about to shake not only Australia but the world in late 1994, another group of teenagers had already cut themselves a swathe through the Sydney alternative music scene. With an average age of 17, Nitocris had already played the Big Day Out, opened for The Cult and Suicidal Tendencies and scored a best-selling EP by the time this album dropped in November and while they never even came close to emulating the success of Silverchair, they did carve a small niche in history for themselves as the country's first successful all-female rock band.

The idea of five teenage girls headbanging like crazy while playing loud and angry rock songs may have sounded like some kind of novelty act, but Screaming Dolorous showed that Nitocris was a band that could not only play but had an intrinsic ability to write well-crafted and inherently catchy songs. Each of the ten originals was stamped with a memorable hook and a clever pop sensibility that belied the band's years and the punked-out cover of "N.I.B." remained a crowd favourite for the rest of their career.

Screaming Dolorous is a combination of a love of classic heavy rock, a youthful punk energy with a hint of thrash and mountains of attitude. Unlike the posturing of other bands however, Nitocris was able to make it sound real, thanks in no small degree to the manic vocals of Morgana Ancone. Over the aggressive, hook-ridden riffs of Jess Finlayson and Kira Taylor, Ancone snarls, howls and spits a vocal tirade like a demented Debbie Harry channeling a banshee. On "Anger", an appropriately-named track if ever there was one, she simmers toward a climax of psychotic jealous rage; elsewhere "10 Stories Down" and "Egotestical" are streams of invective poisonously delivered. With "Thunder Machine" however Nitocris gets almost carefree with a loose, punkish straight-out rocker about hooning around in cars, and "Epic Voyage" sees them taking the foot off the accelerator for a dark, drifting semi-ballad. "Hell Bitch" and "Suxiety" are more furious bursts of oestrogen-driven guitar aggression and the album is closed off by the insanely catchy and poundingly heavy "Haemorrhaging Souls", one of the best songs the band ever wrote.

Screaming Dolorous is a short and punchy album without a wasted moment, an exuberant and angry record from one of the best Sydney bands of the mid 1990s.

1. Anger


2. Thunder Machine


3. Cringe


4. Egotestical


5. N.I.B.


6. Epic Voyage


7. 10 Stories Down


8. Suxiety


9. Hell Bitch


10. Night Stalker


11. Haemorrhaging Souls

Rating: 90%