Pissed and powerful, Seattle's 7 Year Bitch combine punk's ragged bark with metal's brutal bite, and signing to a major label hasn't softened the alienated edge by a single snarl. On the band's third effort, Gato Negro (Atlantic), the all-woman band hurls white hot chunks of rage at a world seemingly bent on driving a bad girl crazy — if it doesn't break her spirit first.

Bitch guitarist Roisin Dunne agrees that Gato Negro, with its wrenching cuts about insanity ("The Midst") and suicide ("24,900 Miles Per Hour") is "aggressively dark." She explains that "some of the world's best songs come out of the worst periods — take Johnny Thunders' records." Dunne is also well-versed in the uneasy connections between triumph and tragedy. She was hurriedly enlisted by the Bitches when guitarist Stefanie Sargent died of a heroin overdose almost four years ago.

"I joined the band when I really didn't know what I was doing," she confesses. "My first show was in front of 300 people; I could barely get through the songs. Then the next thing I knew I was playing at this huge Rock For Choice gig at the Hollywood Palladium, and I was like, 'Okay, lets go'."

Dunne put some of that damn-the-torpedoes attitude to work developing her technique, and the current Bitch album, with its varied guitar textures, bears witness to her labors. Dismissing any attempt to attribute her style to her gender, she describes her sound as "fat guitar with tremolo," adding, "I like to wander and vibrato with one note. Also, it's fun for me to use feedback around the vocals, to get the feeling of the lyrics across with sounds as opposed to notes. If you close your eyes, you wouldn't think, 'That's a woman playing guitar'."

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