The Canadian girls from Kittie have grown up since their hit "Spit" in 2000. After the aggressive nu metal that launched their carrier, the girls are now giving us catchy music with multiple influences. Morgan Lander, the bands singer, is talking about Kitties latest news and answering to all our questions. Morgan also talks about their latest album "Funeral For Yesterday" that was released a year and a half ago. Interview !


“Funeral For Yesterday”, the last Kittie album.

Interview conducted by seb



Date : October 2008 by email

MySpace Kittie : myspace.com/officialkittie

Date : October 2008

Radio Metal : Let’s start with the beginning, can you tell us what made two young Canadian teenagers, your sister and you, listen to metal and decide to form a band?

Morgan Lander (chant): My family have always been huge music fans. Mercedes and I grew up listening to all kinds of 70’s and 80’s guitar driven music, such as Van Halen, Ted Nugent, Heart and AC/DC just to name a few. As we got older, and developed our own musical tastes, we gravitated to that hard guitar driven style of music. The band started in 1996 as a fun, naïve extra-curricular activity. We were young and new to our instruments and just wanted to learn together and emulate some of our musical idols and favourite bands. What seemingly was an innocent after school project soon became a life commitment and a full time job!

Did you have some feminine role models, like Sabina Classen from Holy Moses or Doro Pesch for instance?

Honestly, growing up we were never really influenced directly by any female musicians. Most of the bands we listened to were male dominated, but it never crossed our mind that what we were doing would be a hot topic. We were just a bunch of friends who wanted to make music, write and perform.




Kittie’s line-up never stopped changing over the years. Can you explain us why did Trish Doan, your former bassist, leave the band, and maybe introduce to us your new member Ivy Vujic?

Trish had to leave the band for personal, health related reasons. It was a decision that was hard for her and all of us, but it was in her best interests at the time, and we supported her 100%. We are still great friends with Trish and see her all the time!

We have actually known Ivy indirectly for quite a few years now. She was actually going to come and try out for the band in 2005 when Tara and Trish joined the band, but circumstances didn’t work out in her favor at that particular time. So when Trish was forced to leave the band, we thought of Ivy right away! Ivy, who was born in Serbia, is an amazing bass player and one of the most down to earth people I have ever met. She definitely fits in well with the band!

Why does your line-up never stabilize?

Well, one has to understand that we were only 15, 16 and 17 years old when “Spit” became a huge hit. Things happened so quickly for us we didn’t have time to grow and change members (as most bands do) before we hit it big. Fame, responsibility and being that in demand as a band is a difficult thing to come to terms with and deal with at any age, let alone a time when you are still developing and trying to figure out who you are and what you want out of life. A lot of people have the wrong idea about how things work in a band and expect things that just aren’t feasible or true in the industry, and so people get turned off pretty quickly and tend to move on. It is hard to find a group of girl with the right chemistry and abilities, and unfortunetly for us we have had to do a lot of our growing pains in public.

When a record just comes out, the artist is often to close to its creation to juge his work with the distance needed. “Funeral for Yesterday” has now been released more than a year and a half from now, are you still satisfied with this album now or do you find some wrong aspects to it? If so, what are those wrong aspects?

The song writing aspect of “Funeral For Yesterday” is everything that we anticipated and are very satisfied with how the songs turned out. However in retrospect, I believe that the production could have been heavier and more metal sounding. We were going for a heavy metal album with nods to the 80’s and power metal, and it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to sonically.

You’ve always done this alternation of clear vocals and screams. However, it seems that “Funeral for Yesterday” is dominated by the clear vocals (and you’ve actually made some real progress). Is it just coincidence or is it possible that in the future, no more screams would be heard on your albums?

I think you never can tell what we are going to do next! We are not afraid to try new things and push ourselves to the limits musically and technically, and because of that I believe every album is different. I feel like my singing voice was something that needed to be strengthened and worked on, so FFY was a challenge for me but I became a better singer because of it. That’s not to say that we will stop screaming all together. The screaming vocals are still very much a part of who we are as a band, so I doubt we will ever phase it out completely.

You’ve evolved a lot since your first album. From nu metal to a more brutal style, and now a more modern metal, what has influenced this evolution? Growing up?

Over the years we have toured relentlessly, and have become a tighter better band both technically and musically because of it. We were so young and inexperienced when we first started that there was endless room for improvement and growth. I think growing up has had a lot to do with it. We are a little more self assured, a little more self aware, and know exactly what we want.

What is Kittie doing right now? Anything new?

Right now we are gearing up for our first European tour in over 6 years! We are very excited to be returning to Europe, and can’t wait to play…




You’re very popular in the US, but it seems like your success is more confidential in Europe. Do you know the reasons why?

Well I think it has to do with the fact that we have never really had a strong label presence in Europe. It is very difficult to make it to tour over seas when you have to pay for everything yourself! We do have a very dedicated fan base who have been patiently waiting for our return…And with this tour we hope to play in Europe more often, so we can change all of that ?

Bands with a female vocalist, and especially bands with a guttural screaming female vocalist, are really successful since 5 or 6 years. Did you feel any improvement concerning your status due to this phenomenon?

I guess in terms of acceptance things seem to be slowly getting better for women in metal, but we still have a long way to go before it becomes a non-issue.

I would like to say how sorry I am about your father… beyond the terrible family loss, your father also was the band manager. How will you manage all this?

Thank you. Loosing my Father has been an awful shock to our family and a terrible blow to the band. He was a tireless Kittie advocate and a fearless manager who only wanted what was best for us. We have been taking up his management duties ourselves, as I know he would have wanted us to learn from this and carry on stronger than ever.

Are you preparing a new album? Have you already written some songs or done some recordings?

Right now we are taking a break from all of that, in lieu of our European tour.

When can we expect another record from Kittie?

At this point we unfortunetly do not have plans for a new album.