Hammerbox

In the early 1990s Hammerbox ranked among the scant Seattle grunge outfits that featured a woman out front. The group, driven by the fierce presence of vocalist Carrie Akre, matched the unchecked fury of other Emerald City bands yet wove new wave drive into the city’s customary alloy of heavy metal and punk. Akre’s singing fused the unbreakable force of Pat Benatar with the dark, foreboding power of Kristen Hersh. Guitarist Harris Thurmond, bassist James Atkin, and drummer Dave Bosch rounded out the quartet, which issued its self-titled debut on the independent C/Z Records in 1991. A subsequent contract with A&M Records gave the band the material and style to ride the wave created by Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Numb appeared in 1993. Promotion included a slot at Endfest in Bremerton, Washington, where the band played before more than 14,000 spectators, but A&M failed to supply the necessary support and the album flopped commercially. The label soon dropped the act. Mounting friction among the members poisoned the working climate, leading Akre to exit in 1994 and launch Goodness. After two major-label Goodness albums that sold poorly, she established her own imprint, Good-Ink Records. Her solo debut, Home, followed in 2000. Thurmond later teamed with Steve Mack, the former lead singer of That Petrol Emotion, in Marfa Lights, a band first known as Anodyne.