Photo by Gage Vota
PITTSBURGH, PA | November 3rd, 2023: Today, prog-rock/fusion band Feralcat and the Wild releases their debut album, Disassembly. A 5-piece band combining saxophone melodies with Latin-influenced beats and heavy breakdowns. Known as Feralcat, Roger Rafael Romero is rewriting saxophone music's rules. Unlike sidemen and session players, he is a frontman and an artist. Genre? You’ll find him where jazz rubs shoulders with hardcore punk, prog-metal, and synth-pop. Which is to say, where it’s never been before.
Disassembly, Romero’s most ambitious project yet, was first advertised to the public in early 2022. The album comes in two parts, and is set to be the soundtrack for his first video game. The band played live to the video game projected on a large screen behind them at Pittsburgh's New Hazlett Theater simultaneously in March 2022 as part of a sweeping multimedia experience.
“All that music was there all the time, so rhythm and melody are my bread and butter for everything... That was an era of music that I really held dear..But as a saxophone player, I don’t really have space there. So I wanted to make it.”
- Roger Rafael Romero
As a child, Romero was raised in a Dominican-American household in New Jersey, where his parents, uncle, and grandfather - all musicians - influenced him with Latin music rhythms. In between playing in jazz groups throughout his school years, he immersed himself in New Jersey's renowned punk and hardcore scene, where he found a voice screaming in heavy bands.As a result of being inspired by Animals As Leaders and Architects as well as Terrace Martin and Marquis Hill, Romero wanted to create something chaotic, yet fully realized.
It’s another compelling left turn into a world entirely Feralcat’s own. But what’s all the more impressive is that Romero achieved this singularity simply by being entirely true to himself. “I need this space to exist, for instrumental music that comes from a background like mine,” he says. Now, all doors are wide open, and there’s no telling where they lead.
Spirit Lodge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will celebrate Feralcat and the Wild's release on November 3rd.In addition to being available in physical copy, Disassembly will also be available on Bandcamp and YouTube as of November 3rd.All digital streaming platforms will offer the album on November 10.
Feralcat and the Wild is a 5-piece prog rock/fusion band from Pittsburgh, PA consisting of Feralcat (saxophone), Aedan Symmons (guitar), Matt Elias (guitar), Chris "Trip" Trepagnier (bass) and Allen Bell (drums). Feralcat and the Wild compensate for the lack of vocals with a saxophone, making them sound like instrumentalists who stray from existing musical structures. They create a sound that is both easily heard and deeply felt through sweeping lyrical melodies over heavy guitar-driven rhythms. Influences like Underoath and Circa Survive are as treasured as those of Esperanza Spalding and Robert Glasper. Their songs break barriers and melt faces, stimulating the mind with improvised saxophone music that simultaneously rocks the listener to their dancing feet. With the band’s debut self-titled EP (2019), they made a musical style that couldn't be put in a box. It is chaotic and daring, and yet fully-realized; and most of all, it’s punk as can be.
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