Babes In Toyland Resurface For Comic Books

After years of wreaking musical havoc, Babes in Toyland retired to rock star heaven, but on Friday, they came back for one final, intimate gig. |

The all-female riot grrl forerunners gathered at Wizard World Chicago -- one of the world's largest comic book conventions -- to play a handful of selections from the forthcoming album Songs of the Witchblade -- a Soundtrack to the Comic Books, which was co-produced by engineer Dave Ogilvie and Babes' lead singer, Kat Bjelland.

Between each hard-rocking live song, Bjelland -- who sings on nearly all 13 of Witchblade's tracks -- crooned moody poetry inspired by the comic's urban/mythological stories while images of Witchblade's beautiful heroine, Sara Pezzini, flashed on the wall behind her.

As previously reported by JAMTV, the soundtrack is based on Top Cow Productions' hugely popular comic book series, Witchblade. In 1996, Bjelland received a package of the first eight issues of Witchblade. "I sat up in bed that night and started reading them," Bjelland said. "What grabbed me was that Sara Pezzini is a superheroine. She kicks ass all over the place. It's refreshing to see a female do well in any artistic creation, especially a comic."

Following that epiphany, Bjelland spent the next year and a half conceptualizing and creating a soundtrack to the series. The result is the album, which also features tracks by Megadeth, Girls Against Boys, Eric Bogosian, Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori, Chris Vrenna and of course Babes in Toyland, among others.

The album will be available with two limited-edition covers on an exclusive basis at the Top Cow website, www.topcow.com, in late August, while Sept. 8 marks its nationwide release. (Eric Lefeber/Ari Bendersky)