DC Fuse

A refreshing alternative to the testosterone posturing of the Family Values crowd, Kittie are poised to overthrow rap-metal's patriarchy and piss-mark the throne for themselves. This walloping all-girl quartet from London, Ontario, is more {|Ozzy|} than {|Alanis|}, kicking out downtuned, wall-of-sound guitar riffs and mostly indecipherable wailing with a ferociousness that belies their teen years. Clocking in at under 40 minutes, SPIT thrashes at the speed of puberty; the band rages through goth-metal-tinged, bass-heavy songs, as frontwomen Fallon Bowman and Morgan Lander howl like felines guarding their territory. The speed-metal crush of "Brackish" sounds like {|Luscious Jackson|} methed-up in a dark, damp basement. On "Do You Think I'm a Whore?," the singer's self-flagellation ("I look into the mirror/The whore is all I see") is betrayed by aggressive whomping riffs -- this is not the music of girls who feel sorry for themselves because they're members of the second sex. In fact, Kittie could be leaders for the Total Request Live generation's feminist uprising -- that is, if anyone could figure out what they're singing. A few songs into the album, though, and it doesn't really matter. Kittie seizes command of an overwhelmingly male genre without resorting to T&A antics, and that's a feminist statement in itself.