Kittie

In a 2001 interview with Westword, Morgan Lander, the then-teenage guitarist and lead shrieker for Canada's Kittie, an all-female death-metal group, complained that reviewers were "treating us like we'll never be seen again and we're just a novelty." Little did they know that Lander has a sharp business mind ("I took entrepreneurial studies when I was in high school," she boasted) and a determination not to fade away without a fight. Five years later, Kittie remains a going concern -- the band joins Bloodlined Calligraphy and Drop Dead, Gorgeous at the Bluebird -- and its new downloadable EP, Never Again, qualifies as its most commercial recording thus far, a hard, heavy and hooky combination of singing and caterwauling whose lyrics are a long way from their early opus "Get Off (You Can Eat a Dick)." And if this whole music-career thing eventually peters out, twenty-something Morgan and her sister, drummer Mercedes, have already made contingency plans, recently launching their own clothing line, Poisoned Black. So dismiss Kittie at your own risk -- because Lander seems to have plenty of lives to spare.