Kittie

HEAR THEM ROAR

Being a group of women in the metal scene quickly exposed the members of Ng Records' Kittie to some of the more misogynist elements of the metal/hardcore scene. Being women who can also throw down metal as if the apocalypse had come knocking also exposed Kittie to the more wishy-washy members of the scene. Oddly enough, both factions seem to overlap quite a bit.

"A lot of guys laugh at us when they see us," said bassist/singer Tanya Candler, the band's most vocal member. "They are like "Oh yeah, you guys are going to be really good," then they get a taste of our live package and it's like 'Wow!' We are like 'You were making fun of us, now you're worshipping us.' They're like 'he he,'" she said laughing sheepishly.

In the testosterone-centric world of heavy music, it's not surprising the young women of Kittie-Candler, guitarist/singers Fallon Bowman and Morgan Lander with Mercedes Lander on skins-would raise the hackles of some of the more conservative elements of the scene. Soft-spoken and demure, or at least as demure as one can be while wearing a studded dog collar, the band doesn't match the stereotype set by the more haggard and desperate elements of its scene. With its debut album, Spit, scheduled for an Oct. 19, the band hopes to, well, spit on stereotypes.

It takes a stiff upper lip to cut it in the machismo world of hardcore and metal, even if you're a muscle-bound iron-pumper like Henry Rollins. For a quartet of women to get by in the last bastion of rock sexism that is the speed metal scene, they have to be ready to weather a bit of antagonism.

"We get some guys who are on a complete ego trip and are like 'We don't want little girls in our metal scene," Candler said. "We don't want any girls in our metal scene. We don't like girls.' They have the big ego trips."

"It seems to happen a lot though..." interjects Morgan. Talking with the four is akin to listening to their music: hectic, chaotic, but somehow oddly directed to a final goal. Each jump around, finishing each others' thoughts, making adjustments, making snide comments and inciting a rain of laughter from the other three.

Candler keeps talking without skipping a breath. Rapid-fire interviews must be a technique the band mastered long ago. "It's getting better, no one's being territorial with us. Sometimes I think people still feel threatened by us, but times are changing."

"I don't know if our lyrics are down to earth," Bowman said.

The band immediately erupts in a massive whirlwind commentary on its lyrics. Working like a tag-team duo, the band times its blows precisely, only occasionally stepping on each other's lines.

If things are left up to Kittie, the band will have more than a small part in change. In fact, the group hopes to have a hand in bringing gender equity to the speed metal scene.

"There were no women in this scene," Candler said. "It had never been done before, and plus it was the kind of thing we were into in the first place, so we decided to do our own thing."

The band's idealism may outpace its obvious debts to earlier women in hard rock, such as Lita Ford or L7, though admittedly few, if any, female bands made a lasting impression on the driving speed metal. Though women continue to pop up in various areas of hard rock, Kittie hopes to break into new territory.

"We wanted to do something totally different, but in the metal spectrum. We want to change things a little bit," Morgan said.

"We're not man-haters," Mercedes offers.

"Yeah, we're not man-haters," Candler quickly repeats, as if for emphasis. "We don't get it more often than anyone else, but we get it once and a while, and we clear it up, because it's kind of lame. We're like 'Actually have a listen,' and they're like 'Oh yeah, I can see where you are coming from.'"

In fact, the band frequently runs into misunderstanding on just about every level, from its musical direction (Kittie's members are very fond of pointing out that they're not riot girls) to its lyrical focus. Lyrically, the group finds most of its first-time listeners to be totally out of the loop, oftentimes seeing their lyrics as lofty or disorganized or simply half-baked. Though contending Kittie's lyrical tracks hold some type of substance, the band has trouble boiling things down to a simple descriptor.

Morgan continued the volley, saying "But they are very personal."

Not to be left out of the band's most heated discussion, Mercedes jumps in. "A lot of times people won't actually understand what we are trying to say, or listen to the lyrics," she said.

Bowman takes up a mocking tone of voice, mimicking questions: "Are all your songs about boys?"

Mercedes gives listeners a tip to unraveling the band's lyrics. Though it's a far cry from Cliff's Notes, she states the obvious simply to get it out of the air and on paper. "Don't take the songs as they are coming. They are all metaphors. You have to read into it. A lot of people don't pay attention to it. They think our lyrics are about being promiscuous or whatever."

Unraveling the lyrical controversy is certainly a team effort, and Candler steps in to give it a final touch. "You have to look into things a little more and you can see where we're coming from," she said.

Maybe the misunderstandings stem from the band's age. With all of its members between the ages of 15 and 17 years old, Kittie's youth is almost as striking as its unrelenting sound. Though its another aspect of the band setting it apart from many of the more grizzled bands on the scene, it's a difference the band hopes to minimize.

"We don't like to stress our ages at all. Music doesn't have an age. You can't judge a book by its cover. We figure that more people listen to music not focus on our ages," Bowman said. "We don't want to get mixed up in that. We want people to hear us before. We want people to judge us by our music and our musical ability and not our personal lives."

Candler agrees with Bowman. "We don't want to be plagued as the next version of Hanson, or the metal version of Hanson, because it's not true," she said.

Of course Hanson never let loose with throat-tearing screams or wrote a song called "Spit," so it's probably something the band doesn't really need to sweat.

Taken from the site www.music.com.

Links:
www.kittie.net
just KiTTiE - a fan site for the girl metal band kittie