“You can kill the man / but you cannot kill the dog,” is how South London’s Fat Dog end their raucous debut album, WOOF, a collection of songs that are as indebted to NIN and Prodigy as to the sax punk of the 80s. Joe Love, “The King of the Slugs,” started the band during the lockdown with two rules: no saxophone and to stay healthy. And they broke both of those rules, and we should be thankful they at least broke the first.

The sax blows like a wild wind at the end of the post-punk, industrial third song, “Wither.” “You better wither baby / before you die.” The album deals with death at every turn, though it’s usually to stare down death like a wild dog and win: “You can’t kill me / I’ve died a thousand times.” There are a lot of industrial touches to the album, something people can dance to at sold out shows.

“I don’t like sanitized music,” Joe Love says. “Even this album is sanitized compared to what’s in my head. I thought it would sound more fucked up.” The album starts with a fable of the light and time before man existed, but most of it has to do with their grabbing life’s bull by the horns, whether it’s doing laundry or avoiding the bullet of a gun, it includes stories and lyrics that are never boring, fitting for a band that tried to conquer the boredom of the world lockdown, during the pandemic.

The world’s not locked down any more, and they’re taking the opportunity to bring their electric live show to the world, including a recent tour of America. It is a supremely fun and edgy album, something that is more fun for me to listen to than, say, Trent Reznor’s often dark and sludgy stuff, but with all of the same gritty energy. There’s a wild, almost Middle Eastern feel to many of the tracks, tapping into the fantastical music of years past, while keeping them “Running” with endurance and speed into the future.

They seem more like a lean and fierce dog than a “fat dog,” but that’s the sensibility that permeates the album: that our more bestial traits, including any of the seven deadly sins, like “sloth,” are just par for the course. They attempt to get “Closer To God,” but not by following society’s urbane rules, instead embracing the rawness of feeling and the grit of a determination to live out of the innermost parts. “And he’s got no Bible on his chest / He just has his soul.” A raw and moving industrial-influenced, dance-inducing and soul-enlivening album.

Pre-order WOOF by Fat Dog HERE