Feminist punk band 'Bikini Kill' stages comeback -The Asian Age

A 90s-era radical feminist punk band whose scream-along sound became a girl-power call to arms, Bikini Kill was a beacon for a generation of activists striving for a world more hospitable to women.

Now, as an American political battle over reproductive rights rages more fiercely than it has in years, the group known for their catchphrase "Revolution Girl Style, Now!" is back, reuniting to spread their message of empowerment and equality, protesting violence against women and normalizing female anger.

The group -- including front woman Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox and newcomer Erica Dawn Lyle -- broke up in 1997 but recently delivered a thunderous series of performances in New York after playing shows in Los Angeles, and will rock London on Monday.

"The world needs them again. I feel like they're like Captain Marvel, and we've flashed the Bikini Kill sign to bring them back to earth, because it's just messed up here," said Evelyn McDonnell, a pop culture writer whose bibliography includes the book "Women Who Rock." "They just expressed this new energy of feminism in such a wonderfully direct, emotional fashion," she told AFP.

"That was what was amazing about seeing them live again -- this crowd full of thousands of fans, predominantly women, and of multiple generations, people who had seen them the first time around and people who weren't born the first time around," she said, calling it a release of "all this pent-up energy."

---AFP