It’s uncommon for comeback albums to be as good as Kittie’s ‘Fire’. Usually, such albums just need to be good enough to keep the tour machine going. Instead, Kittie managed to make ‘Fire’ quite possibly their best work yet. It may help that all the band members remained musically active since the release of ‘I’ve Failed You’ just under thirteen years ago – together for a decent portion of that period – but even with that in mind, ‘Fire’ is surprisingly good. While the album is a logical follow-up to its two predecessors stylistically, some small, yet significant tweaks improved the band’s sound.

After breaking through at the height of nu-metal’s popularity, Kittie moved on from that scene fairly quickly, eventually settling on post-thrash riffing with distinct alternative rock overtones in the vocal and guitar melodies, as well the occasional melodic death metal section for ‘In the Black’ (2009) and ‘I’ve Failed You’ (2011). Those were in my opinion the best albums the Canadian quartet had made so far, so seeing the band more or less expanding upon that formula after all these years makes the return more than welcome. The improvements in both performance and production really took me by surprise though.

First off, how much Morgan Lander’s clean vocals have improved borders on the unbelieavable. It could be a simple case of her voice deepening with age, as the human voice tends to do, but she’s got a much more powerful chest voice these days. This, of course, really benefits the songs that are largely built upon melodic vocals, such as the intense ‘Falter’, the awesomely ominous ‘Are You Entertained?’ and ‘We Are Shadows’ – my pick for the best of the singles released prior to the album. Coincidentally, these are also the songs that show off once again what an extremely tasteful lead guitarist Tara McLeod is.

Kittie also really profits from an improved production job here. Despite being one of their heaviest albums sonically, ‘Fire’ just sounds smoother than most of Kittie’s earlier work. Mercedes Lander’s drums in particular sound better as a result. She is a song-oriented drummer who is an expert at playing around the vocals, but some previous recordings made her drumming sound stiffer than it actually was. The tom-heavy drum part in the opening title track already show how much better ‘Fire’ is; the drums sound thunderous, yet more rounded. The way she locks with her sister’s rhythm guitars on more uptempo riffs such as the ones in ‘Wound’ and ‘Vultures’ also works wonders in his productional context.

Fans of Kittie’s later work will definitely get more of what they like on ‘Fire’, only better. But I would also urge those who generally don’t listen to the band, but do like contemporary, largely mid-tempo metal with crushing riffs and memorable melodies to give the album a chance. I fully admit that I misjudged Kittie in the past on account of not liking their earliest material very much, but they have come a really long way since then, both as performers and as songwriters. ‘Fire’ is simply a very good modern metal album. With a really cool album cover.

Recommended tracks: ‘We Are Shadows’, ‘Are You Entertained?’, ‘Grime’, ‘Falter’