Viva Zapata! by 7 Year Bitch (1994).
Favorite songs from the album: "Hip Like Junk" and "Kiss my ass goodbye"
It was perceived not only as one of the best grunge albums, but also as an album closely linked to death. It was composed in the aftermath of the death of their former guitarist, Stefanie Sargent, and the murder of Mia Zapata, lead singer of The Gits, who is featured on the cover. According to the members of 7 Year Bitch, it was not their intention for their album to revolve around death, but it was inevitable, as they wrote about what they were going through at the time.
For me, the sound of this band, often compared to L7 by critics, sounds really grunge, with dissonant guitars and powerful vocals. The angry screams embraced by the riot grrl generation and the loud drums undoubtedly make them one of my favorite bands. I thought it was important to start with this band as my first review because when I discovered them, they introduced me, in the worst possible way, to Mia Zapata and her band The Gits, another of my favorites, through this tribute, making me aware of her murder.They also helped me discover a whole world of women around grunge and punk, two genres that have had a huge impact on my personality.
I have read several reviews of this band praising them for their type of feminism, even for not "resorting to lesbianism" as a strategy, implying that this is what other women's bands do. I find this absurd, a ridiculous way of trying to discredit the message of other women in such a male-dominated scene, in which I find ALL the messages of these women enormously necessary.Why would you say something as absurd as "lesbianism" being a strategy for those women with guitars "who hate men" instead of focusing on how diverse and necessary the messages of angry women were in a context like the 90s and how much they revolutionized the scene?
Returning to the album in particular. As I mentioned at the beginning, my two favorite songs are "Hip like Junk" and "Kiss my ass Goodbye." It's not for any particular reason other than that I really like how they sound and they were the first two songs I heard from this band. In addition, "Hip Like Junk" has a title that caught my attention from the start, and its lyrics contain verses that I think are worth analyzing and considering. In particular, I would highlight "We're all so smart and we're all so dense/We need a little more mind over matter/To get to what matters/'Cause we know what's the matter". From what I've read and what I've been told, this song is about seeing a friend fall back into harmful habits, which would make sense given the title and lyrics of the song. The first thing I liked when I heard it for the first time was how it plays with the phonetics of the words, such as "bang" or "kick" and "back," creating a very rough and striking sound that fits perfectly with the theme. However, I think the whole album is fantastic and has an unbeatable vibe. The vengeful tone of their lyrics is particularly noteworthy, and they accompany the angry voice of their singer, Selene Vigil, wonderfully. In this regard, I particularly like the final verses of "The Scratch" "I will have my cake and I will eat it too, just like you/ You better watch out what you're wishing for/I will have my cake and I will eat it too, just like you"
In addition to their angry and vengeful tone, they also criticize problems that may be their own or close to them, difficult emotional situations, addictions, and the feeling (common in many groups of the time, and people, even today if you dare) that there is no hope. We encounter these same themes in songs like "Derailed" "It's happy hour on a sad train/I need these drinks to dull the pain/So don't you question how I cope/Oh, can't you see there is no hope/No reason though it rhymes/Twenty-one hours, just me and mine." And on the superficiality of today's society and the disenchantment of a negative and sad vision, we have "Kiss my Ass Goodbye."
In addition to my two favorite songs, if someone asked me about this album, I would recommend listening to "M.I.A.", the song they wrote for Mia Zapata after her murder. I think the anger they show, the thirst for revenge, the criticism of society and justice, represents well the message that this group maintained in all their songs.The mocking tone, ironically commenting on real, difficult problems that affected them closely, demonstrates their strength that is also reflected in their songs.