Suffer no longer if pure hard rock and thrashing guitars are what you crave. Spike 1000’s Columbia debut, “Waste of Skin,” is a fearless and fresh style of rock coupled with the unique talent of singer Shannon Harris’s brawny, seductive voice.

“We recorded the album in Nashville, and it was cold outside,” Harris said in the band’s biography on www.spike1000.com.

“I remember this because Malcolm (Mfat, bass) would make me run around the block just before we’d record vocals. He said he did it so that I’d sound like I was out of breath when I sang, but I think he just wanted to piss me off so that I would sound angrier,” Harris said.

Harris’s voice only compliments the intensity of the songs on this 10-track album. She can be the powerful and menacing Janis Joplin one moment, and the soft, sweet Debra Harry (Blondie) the next.

This foursome consisting of Harris, Bill Thompson (guitar), Mfat (bass), and Jeff Jones (drums) originally met in Bakersfield and united over their mutual love of intense metal music.

After a few years the band decided to take their guitars to the local scene in San Francisco where they could evolve their music and compete with the typically testosterone dominant cliques San Francisco is known for.

Harris admits it isn’t easy being a woman in what has traditionally been regarded as a “boy’s club,” according to the band’s bio.

“When we walk into a venue to load in and do sound check, people look at me and assume that I’m just some groupie or somebody’s girlfriend,” Harris said.

“The band walks out and starts playing and people react, ‘Okay, cool, we get it-they’re a heavy band. Then I walk out and you can see their faces change. ‘Oh, A girl singer.’ Some look disappointed, some look surprised, but the song kicks in and I start singing and they look overwhelmed. By the end of the set, they’re usually begging for more.”

Spike 1000 has played with such bands as Korn, Stone Temple Pilots, Endo and Stereo Mud.

While passion and anger dominate the lyrics of the album, this “Jekyll and Hyde” singer takes this rage and unleashes a positive and powerful vibe.

Macho men will find they have nothing to fear as Spike 1000 takes a seat in the “boys club.”

The talent and raw, cathartic sound of “Waste of Skin” surpass all girly-band stereotypes.

Two-and-a-half stars out of four.