MOTHERFATHERS & Ь! - Doggy
Some music is really hard to listen to. Take for instance Russian band Motherfathers who reduced themselves to a duo on their new record Doggy, and added the help of drummer Ь!. Together, the three guys unleash a furious torrent consisting of guitar, bass, effects, electronics and drums that make you think the end is near. Although the album consists of eleven short tracks making it to a little over twenty-four minutes, we shouldn’t consider Doggy as an album of songs, but rather an ongoing improvisational session that changes its mood every two or three minutes.
The band likes to describe their sound as psychedelic noise rock, and while the latter two words make sense, the former makes me think of these really strange psychedelic substances where you don’t know yourself anymore. The general tone is set by the freewheeling drumming that makes you think of The Muppet Show’s Animal. The main idea is to punch the drums as hard as possible, to set a foundation on which guitar and bass project their distorted nightmare sounds, with the electronics and effects further deepening the claustrophobic nature of the music. Occasionally the trio dials it back a little bit, but even on those few quieter moments, a bigger threat always seems to lure in the background.
We often visualise post-industrial wastelands when we think of Russia or the former Soviet Union, and as such, Doggy seems like an industrial soundtrack for factories that have long been abandoned. Maybe this is the music you would imagine coming from the ruins of Chernobyl (and yes, I know that’s in Ukraine and not Russia). Doggy is not a pretty album by any means, but it is an impressive musical statement that marries weird psychedelic, harsh noise rock and abrasive industrialism into a jam session from Hell, as if the Jimi Hendrix Experience is trying to channel their never-ending infernal torture sessions to the here and now. I would have preferred if the album had come as one long track instead of being subdivided into shorter segments, but when you listen to it, it doesn’t really make a difference. Toughen up your ears before daring to listen to Motherfathers & Ь!.