Fat Dog - WOOF.

If you absolutely had to draw a comparison between furious Brixton post-rave-punks Fat Dog and another band, you might lean towards IDLES’ vocal delivery or fellow chaotic live show outfit VLURE, but you’d only be marginally close to the perfect atypical vortex that highly anticipated debut full-length ‘WOOF.’ delivers. Because where do you even start? There’s the high-speed marching band brass section of ‘Wither’, the subversive auto-tuned build on ‘Clowns’, the ominous spoken word opening of ‘Vigilante’, the absolute choral absurdity laid out across seven-plus minutes on their debut single ‘King Of The Slugs’, and of course the bonkers decision to even release a seven-plus minute epic about slugs as your introduction to the world. And all that’s before you reach what can only be called euphoric rage on ‘All The Same’. 

‘WOOF.’ is the end to any conversation that originality in music is dead. It’s also proof that everything but the kitchen sink can come together when placed in the right hands (a washing machine does, in fact, make an appearance on ‘Kings Of The Slugs’). Asbarbaric as it is chaotic, there’s somehow and inexplicitly an order to things that the album’s dystopian nightmare fuel perfectly hinges on. It’s unhinged, disturbing, and certainly not a relaxing listen, brimming instead with the live energy that the band are increasingly renowned for. ‘WOOF.’ is brilliant, dark, and downright batshit crazy.