POP MUSIC REVIEW : Pretty Good Scream Is Heard Again

For most of the ‘80s, Scream was a respected Washington punk-rock band of the second rank, with a modest but steady following and a slightly dry sound that set them slightly apart from the rest of the bands in the hard-core scene.

Then they broke up: The singer and the guitarist went on to form the post-grunge band Wool, and the drummer joined Nirvana. As is so much of hard-core punk, Scream was worth more dead than alive.

But as this is 1993, when every punk group that ever played three chords is back together, tottering zombies from the Night of the Living Bands, Scream reunited for a show at the Whisky on Sunday, and the crowd was both larger and more cynical than it might have been for a living, breathing Scream.

Scream proved to be a pretty good hard-core band in the D.C. intellectual mold. They were ragged, riffy, rocking pretty hard, and drummer Dave Grohl supercharged the usual punk-rock polka stuff with an extraordinary array of back-beat flams and paradiddles.

Ironically, if Scream were still together, a bidding war might be inevitable.