Michelle Star

Crete is a tiny Greek island, but it was somehow punk enough to inspire Barb Wire Dolls.

They’re a good three decades late to the dance, but don’t paint them into the retro corner. This is a living, breathing band, fresh, and coming off the launch pad as if they could restart a lost generation. For those of you 50 or older, the Barb Wire Dolls will sound a lot like Black Flag. If you’re half that age, the Dolls will seem almost new; hence the conundrum. What salvages the act from cliché is the savagery of their music: live, you love them. The three women and two men in this band — vocalist Isis Queen, guitarists Pyn Doll and Remmington Pearce, Krash Doll on drums, and bassist Iriel Blaque — represent the apex of West Coast punk, which is a place and time they’ve never been. The Barb Wire Dolls started in 2008 at home in Greece.

The die was cast for such future enterprises with 1970s Orange County/L.A. hardcore punk bands like Fear, Circle Jerks, Agent Orange, and other similar bands up and down the coast of California. Hardcore punk faded during the mid-’80s, then was revived again during the 1990s. Think Social D, Green Day, Offspring, and, here at home, Blink-182. Three chords, no guitar solos, and strumming in one direction: down.

Crete is a tiny Greek island, but it was somehow punk enough to inspire the original four-piece. A sold-out show at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles got the Dolls residencies at all the right L.A. clubs, and Kickstarter funded their first two U.S. releases. In 2015, Lemmy Kilmister caught a show and signed them to his Motorhead Music label. At close range, the Barb Wire Dolls can blow out your circuitry and melt your features. Their raw minimalism, cranked to eardrum-blowing volume, and hotheaded energy is what Lemmy likely saw. All good. But what this band can’t be, of course, is original.

Pleasure Fix and Hocus also perform.