Tons of 2000s bands made it their business to square Nineties indie-rock and Seventies metal. But none were as inventive – or as heavy – as the Portland riot-grrrl trio. Sleater-Kinney had already mastered bracing post-punk on 1997's Dig Me Out, but here they slowed their torrid roll a little, giving Corine Tucker and Carrie Brownstein's guitars more room to move as they jacked the distortion way into the red and Janet Weiss re-imagined John Bonham as a dance-rock warlord. They bash Eighties nostalgia, tell a feminist fairy tale and even quiet down for a couple sensitive love songs – needed breaks from music so intense you wonder how they can contain its explosiveness.

Related:
• Carrie Brownstein and Mary Timony's Wild Flag: a Gloriously Shameless Celebration of Rockness

• Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the Nineties: Sleater-Kinney's 'Call the Doctor'

• Video: Members of the Shins, Decemberists and Sleater-Kinney Play Imaginary Rock Band on 'Portlandia'