Strange Days and Feline and Friends

Those of you who are easily upset of who identify as snowflakes can stop reading here – Feline and Strange are not for those of delicate constitutions. The Germany-based trio are a word-count pleasing delight to try and describe musically – sometimes ultra-goth; sometimes alternative rock; sometime industrial synth…they change their coats as often as they change the targets of their barbed songs (a lot).

Trigger Warning is the title of their forthcoming album and is unquestionably appropriate. From Extinction Rebellion to gender issue to the perils of social media, this is a band, after all, who have re-titled the video to their latest single, Can’t Breathe, to The Corona Training Video – How to Use a Breathing Mask. This is punk in its purest form, agitating and prodding the cognoscenti to delicious effect. It may ruffle a few feathers but that’s exactly the point.

“Our time in the studio was incredibly intense. There was an infinite amount of laughing and crying together. We went to the US as friends and colleagues and came home as a family,” says Feline, the singer of the band. Significant was that the album was created during a phase of major changes in the lives of several team members. The pre-production in spring and summer 2019 was marked by the coming-out as a trans woman of producer Taylor KouqJ Bull, the death of a close friend of the band, sexual assault and a political shitstorm as Mankind allows itself to stumble towards extinction. The production phase itself contained several panic attacks, triggered by the performances to be heard on the album, nervous breakdowns, phases of depression… you name it.

Like Feline & Strange live shows, the songs on the album are connected by thematic transitions: interludes, mini-radio plays, dialogues and soundscapes. This extended version of Trigger Warning will be available on Feline’s Patreon (www.patreon.com/feline) for the backers of their online crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo and Startnext and also on bandcamp.com. The interludes will not be available on the usual streaming channels.

Feline & Strange released their first album in the haze of the steampunk movement back in 2011 and now travel as a wave cabaret band all over Europe, the UK and the North American continent. Band members are the extremely ill-tempered opera singer, pianist and producer Feline Lang (by her own account), metal cellist Christoph Klemke and punk drummer Rah Hell. The latter completed the illustrious trio at the end of 2018.