Re-energized Kittie Is Really Cooking

Band Photo: Kittie (?)

An article about Kittie has been written for Cleveland.com:

There are certain things to expect when one attends a Kittie show. Devil horn-tossing. Crushing doses of heavy metal action. An abundance of black leather and tattoos.

And, at least at one summer show, an impromptu picnic?

"They didn't have any power the last time we arrived here," vocalist-guitarist Morgan Lander explains via phone from a stop in Buffalo, the site of this unplanned shindig. "We made the best of the situation - we went out and bought a bunch of meat and got a grill and had a barbecue.

"All the fans that unfortunately came to the show - but couldn't get to see it because of the power situation - ended up hanging out with us at a barbecue. The beer was free-flowing, and the meat was cooking, and it was a lot of fun."

Subverting expectations is nothing new for the Ontario, Canada-based quartet, which plays along with Otep and Crisis as part of the "Metal Movement Tour" tonight at the Odeon.

While still in their teens, Lander and her drummer sister Mercedes were members of a Kittie lineup that released 2000's feral "Spit," a pummeling debut that smashed any notion that 'little girls should be seen and not heard.'

Although the album stood on its own artistically, much of the attention on the group zeroed in on their ages - Morgan wrote some of the songs on "Spit" when she was just 14 years old - and the novelty of four girls invading the traditionally male-dominated genre.

"You hear the name Kittie, and a lot of people still think and feel like, 'Oh, those are those 15-year-old girls from London, Ontario,' " Lander says. "Unfortunately, in the public eye, that's who we are, and that's who we'll always be. The media tends to choose one angle and just hammers it.

"You can never change and you can never develop - at least in their eyes, anyway. And it's like, we're grown women now. We've become such a better band."

Several lineup changes and a sophomore release ("Oracle") later, the group indeed sounds fiercer than ever on their third and latest effort, "Until The End."

Mixing the growling-to-graceful vocal friction of a hardcore band like From Autumn to Ashes with fret-jumping onslaughts reminiscent of metal gods Slayer, the album is a monstrous slab of heavy rock.

"We just wanted to take all of the elements that we've developed over the years and, almost, I guess, fine-tune them," Lander says. "At the same time, it's almost like we've started anew all over again.

"There's a newfound energy in the band, and with that comes more aggression and more excitement in the music. We're much more mature and much more focused on the direction we want to go in."

She credits the coalescence of Kittie's lineup as a major part of this energy surge. "End" was the first album on which bassist Jennifer Arroyo played, while the newest member, guitarist Lisa Marx, joined as the band was recording the disc.

"Everyone is really, really happy," Lander says. "We're all on the same page. We just have fun onstage. That's the main thing, I guess. You come to a show, and we laugh and we have fun. You can't take things like this too, too seriously.

"If music inspires anyone, regardless of age or gender, that's a beautiful thing. [But] we're just a bunch of broads that like to play metal music, and that's the way that it is."

Source: Cleveland.com