  It is presently unknown how strong lattice potentials influence the fermion
spectral function of the holographic strange metals predicted by the AdS/CFT
correspondence. This embodies a crucial test for the application of holography
to condensed matter experiments. We show that for one particular momentum
direction this spectrum can be computed for arbitrary strength of the effective
translational symmetry breaking potential of the so-called Bianchi-VII geometry
employing ordinary differential equations. Deep in the strange metal regime we
find rather small changes to the single-fermion response computed by the
emergent quantum critical IR, even when the potential becomes relevant in the
infra-red. However, in the regime where holographic quasi-particles occur,
defining a Fermi surface in the continuum, they acquire a finite lifetime at
any finite potential strength. At the transition from irrelevancy to relevancy
of the Bianchi potential in the deep infra-red the quasi-particle remnants
disappear completely and the fermion spectrum exhibits a purely relaxational
behaviour.
