Ever since I started Noisy Headspace in 2023, I’ve always been on the lookout for female voices in the scene, what I believed to be criminally underrepresented and misrepresented. I get cynical, rightfully so, when people gloat over the glory days of Malaysia’s music — both mainstream and independent — during the same days when female artists get sidelined for their musical abilities, and their gossipy personal lives get more spotlight than their music instead (can you think of a critically analysed Siti Nurhaliza album? No. Can you think of the countless gossip articles broadcasted about her personal life? Yes, we all can.)

Last year, I wrote about how 90s all-female punk bands challenged sexism in the scene and mentioned the now-disbanded Intoxicated. Recently, their debut EP Catastrophe!, released in 1998, hit me with a new kind of clarity. I was bewildered at how much it mirrors girlhood — and especially mine — and knew I had to write about it, pronto.

Intoxicated consists of four girls from Petaling Jaya who started the band when they were only 15 years old. They are Nora on vocals, Li Chu on guitar, Kim on bass and Rina on drums. In an essay published in #ProjekBuku — a collection of writings by industry movers and makers curated by Adly Syairy in 2013 — Rina recalled the scary experience of performing at their first gig in 1994. They were catcalled before they strummed their first note, with men in the crowd hissing that they didn’t know how to operate the instruments and they’d be better off holding a broom in the kitchen instead. How ironic, considering this was a Nirvana tribute gig. I wonder what those men think of Kurt Cobain’s feminist stances? Next time you see a man wearing a Nirvana t-shirt, don’t ask how many Nirvana albums they can name but rather if they believe in Cobain’s politics!

Of course, the girls didn’t let the sexism hurled at them slide easily. After minutes spent on stage harassed simply for existing, the frontwoman Nora finally had enough. She yelled “FUCK YOU!” into the microphone, in what Rina described as a brave move — especially when Nora was the one who was at the forefront, with a “Fender Strat strapped across her body, taking the brunt of the sexist insults that were thrown.”

Rina described the incident further: “You can belittle our musical abilities, you can be a sexist asshole – but god help the donkey who tries to tell us we don’t deserve to be on this stage as much as everyone else on this lineup!”

And after Nora silenced them: “For a split second the entire place was silent; and I can imagine the reversal in intimidation when all eyes were on a guitar-slinging teenage girl giving the offensive crowd the middle finger they so deserve.”

Four years later, Intoxicated released the Catastrophe! EP under Positive Tone, the mighty record label known for releasing albums by OAG, Poetic Ammo and more. This was around the time when English Malaysian music had just grown comfortable in the mainstream music landscape, after decades of being deemed too westernised for the masses. OAG changed that in 1994 with their debut album Old Automatic Garbage, and then the rest followed along.

In spite of being under a record label, much of Catastrophe! still retains the DIY feel a punk band is supposed to have. I’m aware of the oxymoron of being a punk band under a record label, but when you’re the only all-female band doing so — like Intoxicated did, making music that mainstream wasn’t accustomed to — can that be a fight in itself? Maybe. The cover art is hand-drawn with coloured pencils, depicting a black cat facing catastrophes: drowning, trapped in a burning house, electrocuted, run over by a vehicle. How awful, but also you’re at the age when grief strikes your wildest imagination to form a source of comfort. In the song “Diet,” Intoxicated paints the ridiculousness and exhaustion of dieting just to feel better about yourself, equating one’s beach-ball-sized butt to a riot. Then in the song “Kucingku Aki” — the English version is titled “Kitty Cat” — the girls chronicled the loss of a cat named Aki, an immeasurable grief that detonates in a deranged way. “I scooped up Mikey’s flesh / from all over the road / His eyes were all eaten up / Mikey looked like a toad / I finally realised that my Mikey was dead / He remains in a jar… next to my bed!” The details are horrifying, what more to put it out there either as a confession or an artificial comfort, but can one expect rationale to remain intact when you lose a beloved pet?

The girls are obviously musically gifted — the potent, fist-in-the-air hooks of punk rock are never neglected, reminding you that underdiscussed politics should be told in infectious choruses more often — but the painfully honest encapsulation of the many facets of girlhood is what makes their work so compelling: the tweeny pains of an unrequited love! The sudden death of your beloved cat that makes your mind go nuts! Conceding to the traps of fucked-up diet culture! The music may be disconnected from what the radio was broadcasting at the time — this was the era when mournful love ballads were on constant rotation — but Intoxicated fought against both the commercial expectations and the sexism hurled at them in ways Malaysia’s ’90s music wasn’t ready for. It’d be a waste to let their music rot in memory when there’s clearly still space for it in today’s landscape.

Just last year, alternative rock band Hawa, fronted by Eff Hakim, released their debut album Terkuburnya Seorang Gadis di Kuala Lumpur. The fifth track, titled “Groupie,” has Eff, in a speak-sing style, recalling stories of being a woman in this scene where your existence is reduced to a groupie or somebody’s girlfriend, instead of the frontwoman of an alt-rock band. After spitting and rolling her eyes at everyday sexism, Eff finally explodes: “I pray to god my band gets big one day / I’ll be a rockstar / and not just be someone’s fucking ex!” It reminds me of that same ferocity from that night in 1994, when a band of 15-year-old girls had sexism hurled at them on stage. They were scared but had no other choice but to be brave. They stood their ground. They silenced the audience and eventually earned their respect. The big question is why it has to take this much ferocity — from Intoxicated in 1994 to Hawa in 2025 — to be seen as human beings who just want to make some fucking music.