"Do you think I'm a... whooooorrre?!"

So vehement she was practically barfing that line -- from a song of the same name -- on her sold-out audience at the Guvernment last night, Kittie singer-guitarist Morgan Lander wasn't asking for an answer so much as demanding one.

Very well. No, I don't.

In fact, I couldn't begin to decipher what's troubling Lander and her big-selling, teenage, extreme-rock crew from London, Ont.

That the group's bellowed cries were garbled goes without saying. They are one freakin' heavy band, and garbled looks good on them. The words to tunes such as Suck and Spit -- that latter being the title of their current debut album -- are so oblique, they were probably better off that way anyhow.

One thing for sure, Kittie aren't lamenting a lack of record sales.

Since it's release last winter, Spit has surpassed gold status (500,000 copies sold) in the U.S., a remarkable feat, not just for an upstart high school quartet from Southwestern Ontario, but for any Canadian band.

Mind you, Spit has been slower to catch on here at home, suggesting that Kittie's countrymen are either too wussy or too discerning to take to the group's forced, by-the-numbers knock-off of superior U.S. noisemakers like Fear Factory and Coalchamber.

Last night didn't make it any easier to tell, though it was clear from the start of Kittie's brief (55 minutes, tops) set that months of hard slogging on tour has sharpened them up, performance-wise.

Much of the crowd seemed more excited to see openers Disturbed, who, intentionally or not, blew their billmates clean off the stage with a clutch of taut, immediate noise.

A small section of the capacity crowd even cleared out before Kittie took the stage and broke into their parent-punishing skree. Reaction to the rest of the show seemed tepid, if mostly favourable.

A complete lack of songs notwithstanding -- and yes, heavy bands need songs, too -- Kittie are beginning to show signs of life as individual players.

Guitarist Fallon Bowman and bassist Talena Atfield supplied much of the groove and enthusiasm for hits Brackish and Charlotte. Atfield even gamely completed a stage dive as a closing feat.

Drummer Mercedes Lander's double kick-drum assaults signalled the show's heaviest moments like a 21-gun salute.

And when her vocals weren't doused in acidic, demonic effects, Morgan Lander's banshee wail peaked out of the din with effective, if fleeting, emotion.

Still, they have yet to click as a unit. After a while, it all just sounded like you were 12 again and you'd just done something to make your younger sister very angry. And Kittie kind of look like The Bangles.

One saving grace is that during the rare times they perked up and moved around, they seemed on to something. But all too often, their stand-offish attempts at instructing the audience to mosh seemed a bit try-hard, as if talking about a good show made up for delivering one. ("Canadians can't do a circle pit," one presumably American fan was heard to complain after the show. They didn't have much to work with.)

Most telling was the fact that the best jam Kittie kicked out all night was someone else's -- a rivetting rewrite of Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell.

Hey, how 'bout Don't Fear The Reaper?