Kittie

Canadian metal band Kittie sounds like what might happen if the best singer from the high school glee club wandered into metal shop and started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Lead singer Morgan Lander has a sweet set of pipes. Now if only she could use her powers for good instead of evil.

Until the End, the third album by this all-female outfit, has a couple of catchy tunes, but you have to sift through mounds of litter to get to them. The main distraction is the gruff, demonic, yet oddly Muppet-like backing vocals, which wisely have been cut from the radio ready vocal remix of the best song here, lead single "Into the Darkness." It's one of the few tracks with a detectable melody, "In Dreams" and the title track being among the others. When Lander actually sings, you lean in to pet this Kittie. But silly you, she's just going to scream in your ears again if you get too close.

If a pissed-off Josie and the Pussycats doing death metal fires you up, then check out Kittie. This cat doesn't need to be put to sleep, but declawing it with more vocal remixing might make it more housebroken. - Jeff Kamin

Anyone who's spent time on the hypnotizing bore that is Canada's highway 401 knows that the only antidote to waking up in a Tim Horton's parking lot is a stack of blisteringly loud records. Kittie, the London, Ontario, heavy metal sisterhood have turned up the amps to 11 and delivered their heaviest batch of songs to date with the road-ready Until the End. Steve Thompson's (Korn, Anthrax) bottom-heavy production and the addition of second guitarist Lisa Marx have had a profound effect on the band's overall sound, resulting in an aural experience that goes straight to the gut. The brutal opener, "Look So Pretty," features singer Morgan Lander doing terrifying things with her throat -- it's somewhere between an emaciated alley cat fighting off the neighborhood skunk and the squelch on a walkie-talkie. "Career Suicide" finds the group in a more melodic mood, balancing the snarling verses with a clean chorus vocal, though this balance works best on the brooding title cut. While siblings Morgan and Mercedes Lander's songwriting has improved since 2001's Oracle, there's still an air of mediocrity to later tracks like "Loveless" and "Burning Bridges" that shows an adherence to formulaic modern metal clichés, and a lack of confidence on some of the vocal takes that makes some of the songs sound like demos. Until the End isn't a big step forward for Kittie, but it's a step nonetheless, and if they can find a way to more creatively disperse their newfound power they'll be unstoppable. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide