Fat Dog – ‘Woof.’ review: unserious, unhinged and sensational

6 September, 2024

Fat Dog (2024), photo by Sam Keeler

When Fat Dog’s highly-anticipated debut single ‘King of the Slugs’ arrived last August, it signalled the feral modus operandi for their debut album ‘Woof.’: capturing the pandemonium of their live show. Perhaps the UK’s wildest live act in recent memory, their adoring fanbase ‘The Kennel’ have already helped sell out shows at London’s Electric Brixton and Scala, with the 2,300-capacity O2 Forum Kentish Town next on the agenda. Fans were already belting out the lyrics to tracks from ‘Woof.’ before producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines D.C.) even laid a glove on it.

READ MORE: The party never sleeps: Fat Dog unleashed in America

Undoubtedly informed by their unhinged, frenetic live shows, ‘Woof.’ veers from abrasive punk to techno and klezmer, with hints of Madness and Nine Inch Nails. Lyrically, it’s chaos, with an underlying concept surrounding ‘The Dog’ (“We are all just dogs gnashing our teeth at the moon”) – perhaps some sort of superior deity that Fat Dog (and all of us, apparently) worship (“You can kill the man but you cannot kill the dog”).

Opener ‘Vigilante’ is a tension-building monster, a fitting introduction to the cult of Fat Dog. As church bells sound over some sort of biblical speech, the industrial peppering of dance-punk that follows is almost apocalyptic. It’s like witnessing an ancient ritual take place before us on the dancefloor; both animalistic and liberating, our minds and bodies are fixated. You can’t stand still, and that sentiment runs throughout ‘Woof.’

‘Confidence, not competence’ is the foundational Fat Dog principle which frontman Joe Love embodies – no wonder his pride is through the roof after watching Karate Kid 2 in ‘I Am the King’ (a phrase he reinforced to himself in a Wetherspoons toilet, post-break-up). “Although the sky is breaking / I ain’t even shaking”, he bellows on ‘Closer to God’, commanding an aura that could probably withstand a hurricane. Meanwhile, ‘All The Same’ is tribal and circular, while the breathless ‘Running’ is purifying, the climax of the self-release that the album induces in its entirety.

It’s clear from the get-go that this is not a band who take themselves seriously – you needn’t look further than drummer Johnny ‘Doghead’ Hutchinson’s ever-present latex dog mask. But crucially, they’ve committed to the bit, and it makes the intricate and occasionally miserable post-punk that’s inundated the UK recently seem like a bore in comparison. Scream the words and dive head-first into the Fat Dog experience, because ‘Woof.’ is pure, unbridled escapism – just what the world needs right now.