KITTIE - MANCHESTER GETS SPAT ON, CHEWED UP AND SPAT OUT
- Luke Storey
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Manchester Club Academy – 10th August 2026
WORDS / IMAGES LUKE STOREY
There are gigs where you stand at the side of the stage, scribble a few notes, take some photographs and go home with your ears ringing. And then there are gigs where you spend half the night wondering whether your camera is going to survive. Kittie at Manchester Club Academy was very much the latter.
The evening began deceptively. Harpy emerged into a wash of red light accompanied by almost angelic sounds, the sort of serene introduction that makes you think you've wandered into the wrong room. Then the guitars arrived — all grit, weight and menace — and suddenly the Club Academy looked like the opening scene of a particularly unpleasant nightmare.
Dressed in dark, gothic attire, Harpy delivered a set fuelled by raw, relatable feminine rage. There was no standing around waiting for the main event. She grabbed the room by the throat and dragged it into the evening with her. By the time she announced, “Mummy wants a circle pit,” the crowd needed no further encouragement.
There is a particular satisfaction in seeing a support band generate a circle pit. It is the musical equivalent of someone throwing a lit match into a petrol station. You know you're in for a good night.
Harpy also made sure to acknowledge Kittie's importance as metal pioneers, setting the scene perfectly for what was to follow.
Then came Bristol's Split Chain, and if Harpy had kicked the door open, these guys simply tore it off its hinges.
The band practically ran onto the stage, already operating at maximum velocity. Bert Martínez-Cowles was headbanging so violently that, from where I was standing with a camera in my hand, I briefly wondered if my equipment was about to become part of the show. Occupational hazard, I suppose.
Formed in Bristol in 2023, Split Chain may be relatively young, but there was nothing tentative about them. Their stage design — complete with old televisions flickering with glitching versions of the band's logo — gave the whole thing a beautifully grubby nu-metal aesthetic. It was exactly the right visual accompaniment for a band supporting one of the genre's original heavyweights.
Musically, they occupied that glorious territory somewhere between crushing heaviness and shoegaze haze. At times I was reminded of Superheaven, particularly in the way the band's vocals punched through layers of dense guitars without losing the underlying melody.
And then Martínez-Cowles decided the crowd hadn't suffered enough.
“Crowd surf.”
“Death wall.”
Manchester Club Academy duly obliged.
The room erupted. Bodies went over heads, the pit opened up and closed again, and somewhere in the chaos was a bloke armed with an Elmo hand puppet who seemed personally committed to taking me out. Shout-out to the tall guy with Elmo — although I'm not entirely sure whether that was crowd participation or attempted murder.
By the time Split Chain disappeared, the Club Academy was primed.
And then came Kittie.
Thirty years.
Think about that for a second.
Thirty years since four Canadian musicians started making a racket that would help define the sound of late-'90s metal. Thirty years since “Spit” announced that Kittie weren't here to politely ask for permission.
For this 2026 summer tour, the band brought together old-school devotees and a new generation of fans, and there was a particularly satisfying sense of history hanging over the Manchester show. This was Kittie's first Manchester appearance since 2010. Sixteen years is a long time between drinks.
Morgan Lander walked onto that stage and proceeded to prove that time has done absolutely nothing to blunt her voice.
If anything, she sounded stronger.
Kittie's particular trick has always been the collision between death-metal aggression and clean melodic vocals, and live that contrast remains brutally effective. One minute Lander was unleashing a roar that could strip paint from the walls; the next, she was pulling the melody back into focus.
Then came the opening notes of “Spit”.
You didn't need the words. You didn't even need to see the stage. Those guitars hit the room and Manchester knew exactly what was happening.
There are songs that belong to a particular generation and songs that somehow escape their generation entirely. “Spit” is the latter. Released in 1999, it helped Kittie establish themselves as one of the bands pushing the emerging nu-metal movement into considerably darker territory. Twenty-seven years later, it still sounds like someone has just kicked open the door.
And the remarkable thing was that the evening wasn't simply an exercise in nostalgia.
Kittie moved between old and new material with ease, allowing the newer songs to sit alongside the classics rather than treating the anniversary as some kind of museum exhibit. “What I Always Wanted” was another obvious high point, while Tara McLeod delivered guitar work that was, frankly, ridiculous.
Her solos cut through the room with precision but without ever feeling like pointless guitar gymnastics. There was muscle behind them. Every note had somewhere to go.
And Manchester went with them.
The Club Academy is not a huge room. That's part of its charm, but on this particular night it also meant that the audience and band were practically breathing the same air. There was nowhere for the energy to dissipate. Every breakdown, every scream, every guitar hit came straight back off the walls.
By the time Kittie reached the end of the main set, nobody was particularly interested in going home.
The crowd started chanting for two more songs.
Kittie listened.
Two encores.
“Brackish” detonated first, dragging one of the band's biggest songs back into the room with all the fury it had when it first appeared. Then “Eyes Wide Open” brought the evening crashing towards its conclusion.
Except there was nothing particularly gentle about the crash.
The crowd gave everything they had left. The pit kicked off again, bodies bounced, voices rose and for a few minutes the Club Academy became one giant, sweaty, deafening organism.
Then it was over.
Thirty years into their career, Kittie aren't a nostalgia act. They're not some relic of the nu-metal era wheeled out to remind people what they listened to in 1999. They are a working, dangerous, ferocious metal band who happen to have a catalogue that has survived the decades.
Manchester got the full experience.
Harpy lit the fuse. Split Chain poured petrol on it. Kittie walked onto the stage and set the whole bloody thing on fire.
Ten out of ten.
Now put them in a bigger room and let's see just how much trouble they can cause.
SET LIST
Fire
I've Failed You
Cut Throat
Oracle
Spit
Do You Think I'm a Whore
Ugly
Empires (Part 2)
We Are Shadows
Pain
What I Always Wanted
Suck
Burning Bridges
Come Undone
We Are the Lamb
Vultures
Charlotte
Mouthful of Poison
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