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 neve.