Babes Shake It Up : ** BABES IN TOYLAND,”Nemesisters” <i> Reprise</i>

Babes in Toyland singer-guitarist Kat Bjelland bellows, vamps, wails and rants with coherent ferocity. Such seismic singing demands sturdy support, which drummer Lori Barbero and bassist Maureen Herman adeptly provide throughout the Minneapolis trio’s fifth album.

Fueled by the fury of a woman scorned, “Drivin’ ” is a stumbling, surging stream of obsessive thoughts. “22” has a Middle Eastern cast to it, with Bjelland’s almost delicate, melismatic vocal fluttering over syncopated rhythms. “Middleman” is an eerily dispassionate indictment of a dysfunctional relationship. In “S.F.W.,” Bjelland’s yowls and growls are as feral as her guitar solo is lucidly articulate.

The last three tracks are reinterpretations of classics. Their clangorous treatment of Eric Carmen’s melancholy ballad “All by Myself” finds Bjelland raging against the loneliness in which Carmen languished, and Barbero’s a cappella rendering of Billie Holiday’s “Deep Song” is quiet and desolate.

But it’s the closer, a rollicking revision of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” that truly fulfills the playful, purposeful promise of the album title, transforming the disco opus into a feminist anthem for the ‘90s.