The Start

Day-Glo hardcore probably isn't what Ian MacKaye had in mind when he bellowed his brains out in Minor Threat. But that's exactly the type of pummeling threatened by the Start, a Los Angeles foursome that zips with new-wave keyboard sass even as it explodes with crusty punk action. "I wouldn't want our record to be so complicated that people wouldn't understand it, but I get really bored when I can't listen to it more than once and still be entertained," says frontwoman Aimee Echo. "For me, making a record's that way, too. Every song has to be completely different than the next, or I get bored." She laughs, but the group's latest disc, Initiation, broods under a cloak of bruised Cure and Siouxsie Sioux-bred darkness -- a change from the No Doubt- and Missing Person-isms of the Start's debut, Shakedown!-- even as it wields brass-knuckles attitude.