FELINE MELINDA was founded in the 80’s by Rob Irbiz and Andy De Santis. Within a short time the project becomes concrete; 1988 the band publishes the legendary debut LP “The Felines Await You”, nowadays a ‘cult’ of the 80s Italian metal, esteemed and high quoted by collectors.
From the speedier and heavy recordings, the band develops into high melodic metal rock – thanks to the new and ambitious drummer, Chris Platzer at 1991, too. After many years of creative cooperation in September 2004 Andy De Santis leaves the band, but his successor Gschnell turns out to be a stroke of luck. Complete again, the band creates a new repertoire of songs written by Rob Irbiz and with arranged by Chris Platzer.
FELINE MELINDA’s music defies easy categorisation of the hard and heavy genre: refreshing and positively thanks to catchy refrains, choirs, garnished with a lot of melody and improved with orchestral k-boards, life-affirming and partly with dark-romantic lyrics – a mixture which grant a high recognition value to the whole.
“Morning Dew”, the 2008 work of the trio, is the best example of it and gives to the listener a lot of variety which reaches from the instrumental-intro to mid-tempo and fast songs, metal ballads, up to an acoustic mainstream ballad. Moreover, the production receives international atmosphere thanks to the recordings made in the ‘Z.E.M.’ studio in Bolzano/Italy, mixed by Bobby Altvater and Chris Platzer in the “Sky Studio” in Taufkirchen/Germany and the final mastering done by Mika Jussila in the legendary “Finnvox Studios” in Helsinki/Finland.
Since May 2011 the band works untiringly on the production of a new album “Dance Of Fire And Rain”. This beautiful album made recorded at the “Finnvox Studios” in Helsinki/Finland, “Sky Studio” in Taufkirchen/Germany and in the “Artifact Studio” in Trento/Italy, mixed again by Bobby Altvater and Chris Platzer in the “Sky Studio” in Taufkirchen/Germany and final mastering done again Mr. Mika Jussila in the “Finnvox Studios” in Helsinki/Finland. Release date was the 12th september 2014 and worldwide distributed by the germans Hard- and Heavy label 7Hard. The young and talented guitarrist Mattia “HeadMatt” joins the band in 2013 and influences the album with his brilliant, fast guitar solos.
The band, from now on a quartet, in 2016 celebrates its 30th anniversary with a unique charity concert, performed in a theater together with a choir, dancers an guest musicians on k-board, cello and a female singer, presenting their best songs of three decades. Furthermore the band presents “Just Ballads”, a compilation in limited digipack edition, which contains all ballads of the group and a new song entitled “Mary Magdalene”, which was produced exclusively for this album.
In 2017, the band starts with a few national an international concerts supporting Freedom Call. On the occasion of the annual charity concert in autumn, FELINE MELINDA also release the first-ever official live-album of their long lasting career. It is entitled “Three Decades – Live At The Kultursaal Theatre” and has been produced with the audio recordings taken during the anniversary show of the past year.
In 2019, the band realises a long-awaited project with the release of the EP „Duets“: some of FELINE MELINDA’s best-known songs were produced as duet versions together with guest singer Doris Albenberger.
Due to the very positive response to the EP, another duet with Doris Albenberger will be released in 2021, the Christmas single „Christmas Time“!
The focus in 2022 and 2023 will be on producing a new studio album. The album „Seven“, which was released in January 2024, was preceded by the single release and music video for the song „Seventh Heaven“.
FROM THE BEGINNING TO TODAY
