Following two relatively commercially successful albums, Nemesisters (which got reviews that called the album "fairly punishing" and "simply dull, recycled riffs and rhythms") was the third and last album of Babes in Toyland, a punk rock band that formed in 1987, disbanded in 2001, and reunited from 2014 through 2020..
Babes in Toyland was an American punk rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1987. Babes in Toyland released three studio albums: Spanking Machine (1990), followed by the commercially successful Fontanelle (1992), and Nemesisters (1995), before becoming inactive in 1997 and eventually disbanding in 2001. In 2014, the band reunited, and the following year began performing live together for the first time in over a decade. The band later broke up in 2020. Spanking Machine received generally positive reviews from critics, with Mark Deming of AllMusic stating: Other bands interested in the underground music scene - most notably Sonic Youth - were fans of the album, so much so that Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore invited the band to perform on Sonic Youth's 1990 European tour to promote their latest album, Goo. Rolling Stone ranked Spanking Machine at #27 in their list of the 50 Greatest Grunge Albums in 2019, writing that Spanking Machine "was a perfect marriage of crunchy Midwestern punk and wry Northwestern malaise." Fontanelle is the second studio album by the American punk rock band Babes in Toyland, released on August 11, 1992 by Reprise Records. Spanking Machine is the debut album by American punk rock band Babes in Toyland, released in 1990. Fontanelle is Babes in Toyland's most critically and commercially successful album, selling 220,000 copies approximately in the United States alone. The result is still fairly punishing, but there's a reward for listeners who stick it out to the last cut: a killer version of Sister Sledge's "We Are Family." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic awarded the album two out of five stars, noting: "Most of the raw, slashing guitars of their early records are gone, replaced by a pulsing, plodding grind that never catches fire...the majority of the album is simply dull, recycled riffs and rhythms, and that is hard to forgive." 
