I don’t remember if it was me or my Persian cats who first discovered Cat Temper but the three of us were enamored with 2021’s Furbidden Planet. If you take away the feline references throughout the album (not that you should!), the album still stood out in a crowded synth wave scene. With new album Cat Out Of Hell, Cat Temper adds a healthy dose of guitar and takes us back to a decade where glam metal bands were briefly allowed to use synthesizers despite the protests of Beavis & Butthead. It’s an arena-sized album of instrumental anthems that encourage high-speed driving in Anthony Price suits with the top rolled down.
Opener “Purradise By the Dashboard Light” makes it clear that Cat Temper are expanding the synth wave palette that made Furbidden Planet an electronic feast for the sense. The guitars are turned up and overdriven until they cut like razors while the synths work frantically to keep pace. For fans of Poison and RATT, “Furever Young” will kickstart your heart but then Cat Temper flip the script a bit and drop some melodic synths in where Bret Michaels would normally be telling us how to do the unskinny bop.
While Furbidden Planet maintained a consistent vibe, Cat Out of Hell covers more territory and the constant shifts work well, probably because the songs are instrumental. “It’s All Coming Back To Meow” somehow fuses Nine Inch Nails industrial with a Kraftwerk sensibility. The track is begging for a remix with Gary Numan on vocals. The title track closes the album with a relentless array of classic synth sounds that proves the Meatloaf belief that when it comes to recording an album, more is more.
Would I love this album just as much if I wasn’t a cat person who loves seeing song titles like ” Feral Angel” and “Getting Away With Meowder”? Probably. It stitches together a lot of what made the 80s so unapologetically awesome from galactic synths to shimmering guitars. By shifting to a more rock-based sound, Cat Temper signal a mew beginning of their musical tail and so far, it’s sounding purrfect.