hat drives a hot young rock firebrand on the make to call herself The Most Hated Woman On Earth? Is Brody playing into the inevitable Sea Hag Queen Of The Harpies hype that is leveled with jackhammer subtlety upon any female rocker who—shock!—dares to actually live the life that is usually an act that performers such as Avril or P!nk put to bed come 7pm? How dare she actually perform her own brand of feminism rather than some societal construct of Women Behaving Badly! It’s happened to Courtney Love, again and again. Look! See! She actually is fucked up—deal with it! Or, is Brody just stating the simple truth?

It’s probably a combination of both. There are some musical circles that really do hate her. In less than a year, Brody’s gone from happily married rock wifey of Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (Oh, she has her own band? Good for her!) to home-wrecking rock superstar and new girlfriend of lone Queen Josh Homme, leaving Armstrong to moan, whinge and collaborate with P!nk while Brody takes over the world from the ground up and splits the So Cal scene in half like rotten melons. Bitch! Whore! Slut! Superstar! Genius! Punk Rock Queen In Excelsis! That tattoo on her arm, Gerald, what does it read? ‘FUCK YOU!’ And that’s just what Coral Fang does: yells ‘fuck you’, not to anyone in particular, but to claims of “sell out” (Oh yeah, you think good production means ‘sell out’? News flash fuckers, it means ‘great album’! “Here To Know” is “Boys Of Summer” being pushed through a meat mangler), “coat-tail rider” (just listen to the thrilling power pop/punk rage of “Drain The Blood”, the leading single, blazing Brody’s own trail light years ahead of her failed marriage to ‘so-five-minutes-ago’ punk), “victim” (witness “Die On A Rope”’s manic “Tell me stupid / Will I die on a rope / I’ve been dead for years!”) and so many other jealousy-fuelled issues. It’s not all cauterizing, tongue-blistering, eyeball-spinning rock, but even the stinkier, more self-indulgent moments are fuelled along by Brody’s magnificently fierce voice—though you’ll most likely be over “Deathsex”’s sado-maso-whatever by about the two-minute mark (it’s 12:17 long). Like, get a room, Betty, and then get some therapy. But hey, it’s the last track, just stop the album early and remember Brody screaming on fire rather than smouldering back into ash.

It’s interesting to note that the original cover art (a sketch of a headless, naked woman crucified and bleeding from the stomach) “was deemed too explicit for your local retail store” and changed to a field of storybook animals. But no amount of gift-wrapping can censor Brody’s pain/anger/brilliance, because all you have to do is plug Coral Fang in and turn it on to experience her greatness. Ah, that’s why she’s The Most Hated Woman On Earth—because she owns it, and soon, you too, fucker.