In a new interview with Andrew Slaidins of The Rockpit, KITTIE guitarist/vocalist Morgan Lander spoke about the 25th anniversary of the band’s gold-certified 2000 debut album, “Spit”. Asked about the lyrical and musical inspiration for the LP, Morgan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Yeah, well, it’s tough, because — well, if you look at ‘Brackish’, for instance, it was the first song that we had written as a band together. And so I think at that time, I might have been 14 years old. What kind of life experience do you truly draw from? And so our bubble was small, our world was small, our experience was limited, but I think, as young people, you still have perspective, you still see things in a certain way, you still feel things. Especially being so young, you feel things very deeply. And I think that is what resonated a lot with people, hearing the emotion that was sort of put into it. But a lot of it was just our own life experiences.”
She continued: “‘Brackish’ is about a friend in a toxic relationship. [Some of the other songs on the album are about] other experiences of just being a woman in a band and going out there in the world and sort of being judged or looked upon differently. Yeah, just a lot of those kinds of concepts were in it as well.
“We did have a lot of interesting experiences, being as young as we were, being women and playing out there in the world,” Morgan added. “And even with the first album, the experiences that we wrote, they were about that stuff. It was very close to home, though. Not — I don’t wanna say too deep, but I think the emotion and the seriousness was there.”
Asked how she feels about “Spit” now, 25 years later, Morgan said: “It’s interesting. For a really long time, I sort of felt like there was a real push sort of maybe in the mid-to-late 2000s to sort of get away from the idea of ‘nu metal’. Our first album is a very nu metal-influenced sound and it truly is really the only album that we did that really kind of really harnessed those ideas and those influences. And for a long time, nu metal was a bad word. And while we did still play a lot of those songs live, we did musically gravitate away from that, and it had a lot to do with, I think, just trying to branch out and try different styles, but also prove ourselves as more than just a nu metal band or a one-trick-pony-type thing. And that’s just the chip on our shoulder that we’ve always had. It’s always like, well, we still have to feel… It’s tough — the pressure to feel like you always have to prove yourself. But I think I’ve come to realize how important ‘Spit’ was, how influential it was, how much it did resonate with people and how the nu metal sound that we had was, it was fun. And it only lasted for one album, but the impact of that single album has lasted for the duration of our career. We are, 25 years later, still talking about the album. People are still listening to the album, a lot of them. And so it’s really interesting to me that it has had the staying power.”
In a 2002 interview with Ballbuster Music, KITTIE drummer Mercedes Lander stated about “Spit”: “I think ‘Spit’ is probably the least polished record I’ve ever heard in my entire life. It was recorded in nine days on Fender Squires. It was a point in our lifetime, and it was like a snapshot of what we were like back in 1999.”
She added: “We’d been a band for so long, we played over 200-some-odd shows before we got record label interest. We were playing every weekend that we could. Sometimes we were playing during the week. We traveled to Toronto, to Detroit; we played a lot of shows. A lot of bands that play 12 shows before they get signed, they sound like crap on their record; they’re experimenting on their recording, and they don’t know what they want to do. We were just lucky because we knew what we wanted to do.”
KITTIE recently announced European headlining tour dates taking place in June 2025 alongside their summer festival run. The highly anticipated shows will be the band’s first on that side of the world in over a decade, providing fans with an opportunity to celebrate their 2022 reunion and the release of last year’s critically acclaimed album “Fire”, their first new LP in 13 years.
KITTIE used 2024 to cement their iconic status, never pulling punches whilst boldly exploring the depths of their artistry. The campaign for the new album saw the band release a string of blistering singles as they reclaimed their metal crowns — “Eyes Wide Open” and “We Are Shadows”, which blazed its way through the Active Rock Top 40, “Vultures”, “One Foot In The Grave” and the album title track “Fire”. Upon its release in June 2024, the record received widespread critical acclaim, with Kerrang! calling it “straight, relentless metal” and Metal Hammer declaring the band as having “completed one of modern metal’s great comebacks.”
Having sharpened their teeth on exclusive headline shows across the U.S. and Canada, a truly iconic set at Sick New World festival in Las Vegas and more show-stealing live performances at globally renowned U.S. festivals Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple, KITTIE has re-established itself as one of metal’s finest live acts. This run of very special shows will mark a huge moment for the band, with their last European appearances taking place back in 2010.
In November 2023, it was revealed that KITTIE was working on a new studio LP with producer Nick Raskulinecz at Nashville’s Sienna Studios.
Raskulinecz, who moved to Nashville from Los Angeles around 17 years ago, had previously worked with such acts as RUSH, ALICE IN CHAINS, KORN, RISE AGAINST, HALESTORM, EVANESCENCE, SKID ROW and the DEFTONES.
In April 2024, KITTIE announced an exclusive run of North American headline dates. The long-awaited shows saw the band perform in five cities across the U.S. and Canada in July and August 2024, giving fans a very special and rare chance to see the band play a full headline set that will include their recently released singles “We Are Shadows” and “Eyes Wide Open” as well as classic hits and some deep cuts not played live since the band’s early days.
KITTIE played its first concert in five years in September 2022 at the Blue Ridge Rock Festival at the Virginia International Raceway in Alton, Virginia.
Joining Morgan and Mercedes in KITTIE‘s current lineup are guitarist Tara McLeod and bassist Ivana “Ivy” Vujic.
Prior to Blue Ridge, KITTIE had not performed since its reunion show at London Music Hall in the band’s native London, Ontario in 2017, celebrating the group’s documentary “Kittie: Origins/Evolutions”.
Vujic joined KITTIE in 2008 and appeared on the band’s fifth studio CD, 2009’s “In The Black”. She also wrote and recorded bass for KITTIE‘s sixth album, 2011’s “I’ve Failed You”.
After KITTIE completed the touring cycle for “I’ve Failed You” album, the band entered a long period of inactivity during which Morgan focused on a marketing job for a chain of fitness clubs while Mercedes worked in real estate and more recently at a software company. The group also began work on a career-spanning documentary, “Origins/Evolutions”, which finally saw the light of day in 2018 via Lightyear Entertainment in North America.
“I’ve Failed You” sold 3,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 178 on The Billboard 200 chart.
Photo credit: Jim Louvau
Source: blabbermouth.net
