Kittie

Pioneering Canadian outfit Kittie has long delivered punishing heavy metal that has continued to transform across the years. Their 1999 entrance brought a gothic nu-metal approach on the breakthrough debut Spit, which housed their most lasting hits and later gave way to a more classic metal direction shaped by Metallica and Slayer on the follow-up releases Oracle, Until the End, and Funeral for Yesterday, each of which reached the upper tier of the U.S. indie charts. Although the group’s roster shifted repeatedly, the Lander sisters Mercedes and Morgan stayed at the center as the chief songwriters. An extended break during the 2010s allowed Kittie to sustain their history through a greatest-hits collection and a documentary retrospective before mounting a major return in the 2020s via Fire, their first full-length in more than ten years.

While still attending high school, drummer Mercedes Lander and guitarist Fallon Bowman formed a band and invited Mercedes’ older sister Morgan to handle vocals; bassist Tanya Candler completed the original lineup, though she departed prior to the debut album and was succeeded by Talena Atfield. A well-timed Canadian Music Week appearance in 1999 led to a deal with Artemis Records through its NG imprint, after which the quartet tracked their first album in nine days under producer Garth “GGGarth” Richardson, whose credits include Rage Against the Machine, Mudvayne, and L7. Spit introduced an abrasive metal sound that gained wide notice through the ferocious lead single “Brackish,” eventually earning gold certification and followed a year later by the Paperdoll EP.

Bowman exited in 2001 shortly before Oracle appeared and moved deeper into death and thrash territory; the album debuted outside the Billboard 200’s Top 50, featuring the single “What I Always Wanted” alongside a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell.” The Safe EP arrived the next year, containing six live cuts and remixed versions of its title track. Atfield then left and was replaced by Jennifer Arroyo for the subsequent recording sessions.

Until the End surfaced in 2004 and, buoyed by the upbeat single “Into the Darkness,” charted outside the Billboard 200’s Top 100. Additional changes followed: guitarist Lisa Marx spent roughly a year in the band before Arroyo departed in early 2005 to join Suicide City. By 2006 the lineup stabilized around the Lander sisters plus guitarist Tara McLeod and bassist Trish Doan, who issued Funeral for Yesterday the following year; its title track became Kittie’s highest-charting U.S. single to that point.

Doan later stepped away for health reasons and was replaced by Ivy Vujic. The Lander sisters, McLeod, and Vujic worked with producer Siegfried Meier on the fifth album, In the Black, released in 2009. After extensive international touring the band returned to the studio and delivered I’ve Failed You in August 2011, along with video singles “We Are the Lamb” and “Empires, Pt. 2.” During the ensuing tour break, Mercedes joined the female power-pop group the Alcohollys alongside former bassist Tanya Candler. Vujic departed in early 2012, allowing Doan’s return, and the best-of set Not So… Safe appeared on September 11 of that year.

In March 2014 the band launched a crowdfunding effort to produce a documentary and book marking their twentieth anniversary, enlisting director Rob McCallum and writer Mark Eglinton; the campaign met its target in eight hours and ultimately more than doubled the original goal. After principal filming wrapped, tragedy struck when Doan died suddenly in Australia in February 2017 at age 31. The original lineup reunited for a single Ontario performance in October 2017. Early the next year the documentary project reached completion, and the three-disc Origins/Evolutions package, issued through Lightyear Entertainment in March, paired McCallum’s film on Blu-ray and DVD with a live album. Following a period of lower visibility, Kittie began a substantial resurgence in the early 2020s with select live shows and a new association with Sumerian Records. Their first new music in over a decade, “Eyes Wide Open,” surfaced in February 2024, succeeded shortly by “We Are Shadows” and “Vultures.” These tracks formed the core of the sixth studio album Fire, which arrived that June under producer Nick Raskulinecz.