In 2000, Kittie exploded onto the metal scene with Spit, a record brimming with raw energy, youthful defiance, and unfiltered emotion. Now, 25 years later, guitarist and vocalist Morgan Lander reflected on the album's creation, its themes, and the lasting impact of its nu-metal sound, in a recent interview with The Rockpit.
Elaborating about the album's lyrical content and the inspiration behind his creation, Lander, shared (via Blabbermouth): "Well, if you look at "Brackish" for instance, it was the first song that we had written as a band together. And so I think at that time, I might have been 14 years old. What kind of life experience do you truly draw from? And so our bubble was small, our world was small, our experience was limited, but I think, as young people, you still have perspective, you still see things in a certain way, you still feel things. Especially being so young, you feel things very deeply. And I think that is what resonated a lot with people, hearing the emotion that was sort of put into it. But a lot of it was just our own life experiences."
That youthful perspective, though limited in scope, fueled much of Spit's lyrical content. ""Brackish" is about a friend in a toxic relationship. Some of the other songs on the album are about other experiences of just being a woman in a band and going out there in the world and sort of being judged or looked upon differently. Yeah, just a lot of those kinds of concepts were in it as well," she explained.
Being young women in the metal scene brought its own set of challenges, something that found its way into the band's lyrics.
"We did have a lot of interesting experiences, being as young as we were, being women and playing out there in the world," Lander said. "And even with the first album, the experiences that we wrote, they were about that stuff. It was very close to home, though. Not — I don't wanna say too deep, but I think the emotion and the seriousness was there."
Looking back, Lander acknowledged the complicated relationship Kittie had with the nu-metal label. "It's interesting. For a really long time, I sort of felt like there was a real push sort of maybe in the mid-to-late 2000s to sort of get away from the idea of 'nu metal'. Our first album is a very nu metal-influenced sound and it truly is really the only album that we did that really kind of really harnessed those ideas and those influences," she says.
She continued, "And for a long time, nu metal was a bad word. And while we did still play a lot of those songs live, we did musically gravitate away from that, and it had a lot to do with, I think, just trying to branch out and try different styles, but also prove ourselves as more than just a nu metal band or a one-trick-pony-type thing. And that's just the chip on our shoulder that we've always had. It's always like, well, we still have to feel… It's tough — the pressure to feel like you always have to prove yourself."
But time has given her a different perspective on Spit's place in the band's history. "But I think I've come to realize how important Spit was, how influential it was, how much it did resonate with people, and how the nu metal sound that we had was, it was fun. And it only lasted for one album, but the impact of that single album has lasted for the duration of our career," Lander reflected.
"We are, 25 years later, still talking about the album. People are still listening to the album, a lot of them. And so it's really interesting to me that it has had the staying power."
