As a live sensation, Fat Dog have been the talk of the year. The London five-piece offer a dementedly energized night out. Performative concerts, tight as zip-wire but hedonistic and loose round the edges. They’ve developed a solid rep for sending audiences nuts. Consequently, there’s a hungry new fan-base salivating for their debut album, WOOF. Coming in at just over half-an-hour, it captures their battering zing; short, sharp and ballistic.
Fat Dog’s sound is rooted in proto-techno crunch akin to the movement once known as Electronic Body Music, which is to say bands such as Front 242, Skinny Puppy and Nitzer Ebb. But they add elements of big room trance, notably a hands-in-the-air electro-choral aspect, as well as punker EDM attitude, snifters of Balkan/Klezmer, and bizarre but passionately delivered lyrics (“Like a moth crashing into the sun/Find a burger, a burger for your bun”).
There are a couple of absolute stonkers, both of them singles; the galloping, epic seven-minute “King of the Slugs” and the equally huge “Running”, which is like an industrially crunching cousin to Underworld’s “Born Slippy”. “Wither” zaps along on a tasty riff from Suicide’s leftovers drawer, while slowie “I Am King” comes on like an unlikely fusion of Crystal Castles and Pet Shop Boys.
Those who’ve followed the band may bemoan the fact that the meat of WOOF is tunes already released, but to newbies it is a solid snapshot of their wigged-out potency. Many are the bands who cut an outrageously fresh swathe through gig-land but then never quite translate that into fans listening to their recorded music. I’d hazard that Fat Dog’s true breakthrough album lies ahead. WOOF, in the meantime, is a wild-eyed taster, a contagiously frenzied opening shot, not so big on memorable tunes, but massive on vibe, attitude and bull-in-a-china-shop rampaging.
Below: Watch the video for "Running" by Fat Dog
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