Rarely has a band spent so long trying to dislodge a genre label they’d entirely outgrown. exploded out of London, Ontario, with 1999 debut : an album which did largely fit into the zeitgeist of the time. By second album , though, they’d moved on entirely, giving rein to their more aggressive extreme metal tendencies.
The four-piece would continue to experiment and expand through the next decade, but that nu metal tag would still prove hard to shake. With the band now back in action following a lengthy hiatus with new album , it’s the perfect time to reevaluate Kittie’s highly consistent and often underrated catalogue..
. Kittie have never made a terrible album, but was perhaps their least cohesive. The band spent much of their career in various states of transition – both musically and in terms of the constant line-up changes that dogged them.
Though this saw their first attempts to really inject strong melodies into their crunching heaviness, it achieved mixed results. They’d mix catchiness and oomph far more smoothly on later albums. The follow-up to went even deeper with the melodies and still stands as Kittie’s most accessible album.
That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, and tracks like and the radio hit of a title track have more than stood the test of time. There are still plenty of weighty grooves to be found, but the clean vocals were more to the fore. Plus, the whole album had a more polished sound that the band would later claim they were never entirely happy with.
was undoubtedly a reaction to the perceived misstep of , roaring into life with an incendiary zeal. “We were coming back and taking no prisoners,” drummer Mercedes Lander told us recently. They still retained their carefully honed melodic sensibilities, however, and this was the first time they fully blended all those elements into a single hulking whole.
set the blueprint for follow-up , on which they finally perfected their monstrously chimerical sound. The album combined frothing death metal aggression, huge stomping grooves and streaks of melody, with the darkest and most personal lyrics that vocalist/guitarist Morgan Lander had dredged from her soul. It was a fantastic album but interest in the band had waned, with Morgan feeling that Kittie had “overstayed our welcome”.
It would be their last album until 2024’s . Placing the just-released so highly might have a whiff of recency bias about it. But, Kittie’s comeback was a genuinely brilliant return after a gap of 13 years.
Not only did it dip into every era of their career (including their now-distant debut); it did so with a renewed sense of passion, a few new tricks and all the experience they’ve collected across a quarter of a century. Morgan’s vocals sounded incredible, while the musicianship and songwriting had never been stronger. The latest news, features and interviews direct to your inbox, from the global home of alternative music.
Kittie have certainly made more accomplished albums than their 1999 debut. They’ve written albums that are heavier and others that are more melodic, but they’ve never matched the raw exuberance and teenage angst of . Rightly or wrongly, this remains the iconic sound of the band for many people.
It was certainly one of the most explosive introductions of the nu metal era, with a huge anthem of female empowerment in and a latent sense of heaviness that would soon come bursting out. Kittie would improve technically on what they did on , but their transformation from rising nu metal stars into a band that was entirely its own was a beautiful thing to behold. In a single stroke, they moved away from the contemporary scene, adopting Pantera-style grooves and an extreme metal sense of aggression.
“ was the complete antithesis of Spit,” Mercedes told . “It was laser-focused. We wanted to put out the heaviest record we could.
” It was not only a bold move; it also resulted in a stormer of an album that would stand the test of time. Paul Travers has spent the best part of three decades writing about punk rock, heavy metal, and every associated sub-genre for the UK's biggest rock magazines, including and . “Did we do drugs in the studio? Of course.
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