For years, fans have demanded the return of Hole’s long out-of-print catalog to vinyl, and the band have answered the call. To create the definitive editions of Pretty On The Inside, Live Through This, and Celebrity Skin, Hole guitarist and co-founder Eric Erlandson personally spearheaded the curation, overseeing every aspect of the reissue project.

Pretty On The Inside and the original Teenage Whore 12-inch single have been newly remastered, while Live Through This and Celebrity Skin have been newly mastered for vinyl. Each release also features faithfully reproduced artwork, restored packaging, and sought-after collectible exclusives.

Thirty-five years ago, the world officially met Hole with the arrival of the band’s debut, Pretty On The Inside in 1991. The original lineup—Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson, Jill Emery, and Caroline Rue—recorded the album at Music Box Studios in Los Angeles with co-producers Don Fleming and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.

To this day, it continues to inspire a cult following, fueled by standout tracks including the title track and Teenage Whore, which has generated more than 16 million Spotify streams.

Then came the Platinum-certified Live Through This. A game-changing sonic exorcism of rock, punk, noise, and pop, the 1994 landmark remains one of the defining albums of its era. With the late Kristen Pfaff on bass and Patty Schemel on drums, Hole recorded the album at Triclops Sound in Marietta, Georgia alongside producers Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade.

Highlighted by Violet, Doll Parts, Jennifer’s Body, and Miss World, it has influenced successive generations while continuing to grow in stature. Live Through This appears on countless Best Of lists, including Rolling Stone’s “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,”, Rolling Stone’s “50 Greatest Grunge Albums,”, and NME’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”

Pitchfork also awarded it a rare perfect 10.0 score. Its influence extends beyond music, inspiring the title of the 2009 cult horror comedy Jennifer’s Body, while Miley Cyrus delivered a celebrated cover of Doll Parts on the Howard Stern Show.

More recently, Slayyyter delivered a blistering cover of Violet for Triple J’s Like A Version, earning a public co-sign from Courtney Love, who shared the performance on Instagram before posting a mashup of Hole’s Celebrity Skin with Slayyyter’s “BEAT UP CHANEL$.”

Hole capped off the decade with Celebrity Skin in 1998. Welcoming Melissa Auf der Maur on bass, the group worked with producer Michael Beinhorn at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Upon release, the album debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, was later certified Platinum, and earned four GRAMMY® Award nominations, including Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for Celebrity Skin, as well as Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for Malibu.

In a recent retrospective, PitchforK awarded the album a 9.0 rating, writing, Though Hole’s sound had expanded, their bite remained razor sharp. Doja Cat has also performed her own rendition of Celebrity Skin. To date, the album has amassed nearly one billion cumulative streams.

In 2026, Hole’s music remains as incendiary, irresistible, and inimitable as ever. There was never a rock band quite like Hole, and there never will be another.

As for that we are reviewing here today, well, for those still unaware, Hole’s landmark 1991 debut, Pretty On The Inside, returns to vinyl in a definitive new release overseen by founding guitarist Eric Erlandson. Newly remastered for vinyl, the album presents Hole’s incendiary debut with enhanced fidelity while honoring the spirit and impact of the original recording.

Produced by Kim Gordon and Don Fleming, Pretty On The Inside introduced Hole with a fearless fusion of noise, punk, and alternative, establishing the band’s singular voice and laying the foundation for one of the most influential careers in modern rock.

Featuring the original lineup of Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson, Jill Emery, and Caroline Rue, the album remains as visceral, provocative, and vital today as it was when it first emerged from the alternative underground.

Pressed on 180-gram black vinyl, this worldwide release delivers the album’s raw power with renewed depth and detail while preserving the intensity of the original recordings.

Presented with the full album artwork and thoughtfully restored packaging, Pretty On The Inside returns as a definitive archival presentation celebrating the uncompromising beginning of one of alternative rock’s most distinctive and enduring bands.

Side A:
A1. Teenage Whore
A2. Babydoll
A3. Garbage Man
A4. Sassy
A5. Good Sister / Bad Sister

Side B:
B1. Mrs. Jones
B2. Berry
B3. Loaded
B4. Starbelly
B5. Pretty on the Inside
B6. Clouds

I’ve always thought that Pretty on the Inside, Hole’s debut album had a misleading title in a way because it isn’t about people who have everything going great in their lives, moreover it was about people who are broken inside. The opening song alone, “Teenage Whore” is one of the most brutal and yet engrossingly interesting songs that has ever opened an alt-rock album, in my humble opinion (being that it is all about a mother-daughter relationship of a prostitute).

The whole album is just one long 38-minute rampage into raw emotion – lyrically, musically and especially vocally. Pain, anguish and brokenness, and all expelled within a series of primal screams that tear through your soul within each and every chorus.

The guitars manage to both rip and jangle through eleven songs – some tortured, others more dreamlike, most a combination of the two. It often feels like being trapped inside a bad dream, but in a way that becomes strangely hypnotic rather than frightening.

The musicianship on display is not about pop hooks or flashy guitar work, but emotional impact. Unstable chord sequences, disconnected arrangements, and sudden shifts in structure constantly create unease and tension.

This is not designed as accessible pop music so much as an abrasive, emotionally overwhelming piece of art, though one that ultimately feels cathartic.

Moreover, Kim Gordon’s production keeps the focus firmly on Love’s voice – veering from those aforementioned blood-curdling screams to something like a lost child whimpering. The guitars are often deliberately thin, scratchy and biting, rather than heavy and driving, which adds to the album’s sense of raw exposure.

There are even traces of shoegaze and jangle-pop buried underneath the noise, as if those genres had been dragged towards emotional collapse.

In closing, for those new to Hole’s sound, well, it’s not extreme metal nor anything remotely offensive. True, there’s fervent guitar distortion and some shrieking, but nothing too much different from Sunny Day Real Estate’s take on introspective punk/hardcore.

There’s no true fast rhythms, harmonies are mere power-chords and open-chord strumming, and apart from a few rumbling one-chug breakdowns on “Sassy” and the chromatic run of the title track, it’s mostly an agonizing, lazily-played affair where the strong points are the extremely confident, yet always confrontational vocals and some torture-like sludge akin to Unwound (“Good Sister/Bad Sister”, “Mrs. Jones”).

Everything that made Hole what it was and everything that makes the band as iconic today as they ever were back then.

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