Kittie – Until the End (Artemis Records)
The entire metal world seems to be very divided on this album. I’ve read reviews wondering how anyone was stupid enough to sign these girls. I’ve also read reviews praising their hard-to-comprehend genius. Can it be a little from column A and a little from column B? It’s metal, undeniably so. Riffs everywhere, plenty of double-bass drumming, growled/screeched vocals (and some very nice clean ones), and just an overall angry, pissed off theme. But it’s not brilliant. It’s not even great. It’s good. It shines at times, and times I find myself thinking, “Dude, this shit sucks.” A recommended listen, but be skeptical. Be very skeptical.

Tracks:
1) This shines! Awesome intro, all doomy and sludgy and shit, and then the actual song has this one simple riff that goes all through it, but it’s effective, and the all-growled vocals work. I dig.
2) More middle-of-the-road, I like the effort, but the clean-vocal melody is a little uninspired.
3) I like this one too, the vocals are almost operatic (no Tarja, mind you, but still...) and the intro sounds like a “classic rock” type song you might hear on the radio.
4) Now this shit sucks. Totally generic, lame riff, connect-the-dots drumming, we’re-a-garage-band-and-we-need-more-time-to-hone-our-skills material. Who signed these broads?
5) Damn! Way to make up for that last song. Mildly black-metalish, mildly metalcore-ish, and all evil and scary. Neat!
6) Eeek! The shit is back! Next!
7) Better, much better. Catchy, good metal, period. Had the rest of the album sounded like this, I would’ve been happy.
8) Starts out really shitty, but improves a little. There’s an odd bass part/effect here that’s driving me nuts, though, sounds like an a cappella punch-in. Weird.
9) Short song, and thank god for that, this is a wretched attempt at injecting some good vocal ambience into the song.
10) Simplistic hardcore, but sometimes that and a little bit of passion is all I need. This song gets a thumbs up. Ends with about 35 seconds of silence.
11) “Vocal remix” of track 7. Basically, clean vocals only. Not bad.