Hi, everyone. Newthany Stachetano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Fat Dog album, WOOF.

Yeah, here we have the debut full-length LP of up-and-coming UK music act, Fat Dog, who I didn't really know about when I first stumbled upon their music, which came in the form of a single, I believe the song "Running", which was released in promotion of this album. And upon digging a bit further into the group, I didn't find a whole lot to know.

I mean, this is their first official album to speak of as a group, so no big back catalog to go through. Though a few of the band's members seem to have amassed at least a bit of solo output, respectively, some of which most definitely plays into the music the group makes as a collective, like frontman Joe Love's experience as an electronic music producer.

But yeah, essentially the band started under the COVID lockdowns, and eventually from there would go on to make some strong impressions with a series of wild live performances. They've also opened up for the likes of Viagra Boys, as well as Yard Act, two bands that I'm pretty fond of. So that's a most definitely good company to keep. I've also seen that their drummer mostly commits to wearing a German Shepherd mask during live performances and in band pictures.

But what is more important than all of this is the intriguing and unique sound the band has been able to conjure in such a short period of time, which is all laid out pretty clearly on the opening track to this thing, "Vigilante", a track that I think could have had a much stronger ending, but it still works as a tone setter that sets us up for a lot of the sounds and inspirations that we hear throughout the record. The track begins with a very dramatic intro, a timpani roll, and it sounds like a carnival barker introducing the band, which immediately breaks into chilling synthesizers, cinematic bells, and some very dramatic spoken word passages that describes humans as animals with very primal and bestial tendencies. We're all just dogs, gnashing our teeth at the Moon.

What follows from here is some very goth-coated industrial EBM, topped with deadpan lead vocals, as well as these vaguely exotic melodies that range from sounding like something between klezmer or Romani folk music, something from the Eastern bloc.

We hear much the same mix of influences deeper into the record, but they are executed with better progressions and performances, like with the 7/8 time grooves and massive string licks and harmonies at the start of the track "Closer to God", which features some incredible dynamics, some very tense verses, behind which you have an incredible instrumental build. Then the tension breaks with this amazing industrial dance crescendo, which feels equally clubby and ritualistic. The visceral energy of the track and the weird religious overtones of the lyrics are a very harrowing and odd combo.

Then from here, we have more direct and pumping groups on the song "With Her". With just driving synth bass lines that feel like something out of a chase scene or a video game. Meanwhile, Joe Love's performance vocally on top of this really sells it. These very simple but very catchy refrains of, "You're better with a baby before you die", and the shrieks that come right after, "The whole team dies." And once again, the band does a really great job of giving us a track that just has a great pop sensibility, is visceral and thrilling and exciting and blood-pumping like a good rock song, but also simultaneously has this progressively heightened tension to it like a good electronic dance music track.

"King of the Slugs" pushes many of the same instrumental and stylistic elements once again, but does so to an even more epic degree with the longest song length on the record, plus a very orchestral midpoint, which feels almost like Mike Patton or Mr. Bungle inspired. You have these folksier passages in the song, which eventually give way to this industrial dance metamorphosis, which, again, it's just incredible how fluidly the band brings all of these styles and all of these sounds together and just balances them out so well. And keeping things consistent lyrically and thematically, we have more of these conceptual angles of man as beast, in this case, with this particular song, like a slug, a mollusc.

Meanwhile, "Running" brings the religious themes back into the fold with harrowing lyrics that reference images of Satan and God and widespread violence that once again paints humanity as just completely mindless, bestial.

And these are pretty much the meatier tracks on the record; if you didn't notice, there aren't that many of them. I mean, there is also "All the Same", which is a pretty decent throwback old-school EBM cut, though I do think it's not maybe quite as daring aesthetically as some of the other tracks here. Also a little short, too.

But yeah, over the course of this very short album, as epic as some of the tracks are, I feel like the band paints themselves into a corner a little bit. Plus, there are a few interlude cuts along the way in the tracklist, which don't sound too bad. They're produced very well and present some very interesting aesthetic and musical ideas, but they don't really segue into or from the song surrounding them all that effectively. Again, we're talking about a record that is just over 30 minutes in length, nine tracks. You don't really have a whole lot of room to play with, and you're throwing multiple interlude tracks out, including the outro, which does try to come full circle with some of the themes that are spoken about on the first song on the record.

But overall, when you're talking about humans as beast and religion and violence and our base primal instincts and how those things play out into a very dystopian worldview, these are all very huge and very just massive ideas that honestly it's pretty hard to dig into any of these in a profound or significant way in such a short run time.

So yeah, there are most definitely some sounds and ideas on this record that I think could have done with a bit of expansion and exploration, not to mention that I think you really could have whittled this tracklist down into a fantastic EP. As an album, though, the entire thing feels a little scant and like it's packed with just a bit of unnecessary filler, that the sequencing is a bit odd.

All of that being said, though, I really did enjoy this, and I'm feeling a strong 7 to a light 8 on it, and will very much be looking forward to seeing what Fat Dog does after this.

Anthony Fantano. Fat Dog. Forever.