Kittie - In the Black

I must admit that Kittie has fallen off my radar in recent years. All their albums since Oracle have suffered from one fatal flaw. They are able to come up with some damn good riffs, then blow it as soon as Morgan Lander, the vocalist, opened her mouth. After hearing some things here and there about their latest effort, I decided to check it out. And I am glad I did. While not going down as a classic, In The Black is easily their best effort since Oracle.

The album shows musicianship that I was not convinced the band had in them. The eerie intro Kingdom Come drops you right into the Dethklok-esque My Plague. Despite the majority of the lyrics being growled, the song is quite listenable. Cut Throat, the first single, splits the time between growling and real singing. It has a nice bass line and killer guitar solo. At first I didn't care to much for the track, but after a few listens Die My Darling, is growing on me.  Sorrow That I Know is a beatifully haunting song with a killer riff where Morgan gets to show off her pipes. Forgive and Forget almost lost me completely, but if you can make it to the half way point, it really picks up and moves away from being a "Bang-n-Scream".  Now or Never again shows some real vocal power, has a good but short guitar solo, but is mostly a short filler song. Much of the same could be said about Falling Down. Sleepwalking is nothing special, either. Whiskey Love Song misses the mark while still being fairly solid. Ready Aim Riot is not one of my favorite song, but could easily see later fans of Kittie loving this one. I will say this track has some of the best guitar playing on the album. The Truth, the album's final track starts with so much potential that is squandered away very quickly. Of all the songs, this sounds most like Until The End and Funeral for Yesterday, where the band had this habit of ruining awesome music with horrible lyrics or singing.

As a whole, this is a pretty solid album.  It starts to lose it towards the end, but even then the songs are better than what I've heard from Kittie in a while. This isn't an album that you would want to hear start to finish, but mix the individual tracks in with a playlist and you'll find yourself paying attention when Kittie comes to play.