Four years ago, the Belarusian post-punk band went viral on TikTok, and their take on post-Soviet melancholy became the soundtrack to moody videos made across the globe. Since then, Russia has accelerated its ongoing attacks on Ukraine, and the members of Molchat Doma have had to leave home. Now they live among Los Angeles’ palm trees, far from the oxidizing Eastern bloc with which they’ve been so closely associated—but their melancholy remains.
On , their fourth album (and first since 2020), Molchat Doma continues to channel ’80s goth-rock sounds in service of their particular brand of gloom, bringing more ebullient, confident instrumentation into the mix. While , Molchat Doma’s last album, was dominated by leaden guitars, whirrs with ’s industrial batwings; most of the album is propelled by frantic drum machines and synths. Like dogs waiting to be fed, these pulsing sounds scramble over and into each other, and the effect is captivating.
“Ты Же Не Знаешь Кто Я / Ty Zhe Ne Znaesh Kto Ya” hisses for a full minute before vocalist Egor Shkutko enters its frenzy, and the darkness of his voice pulls you deeper into cool hypnosis. Then it wavers, as if it were disappearing in acid: “You can’t hear me, you can’t imagine who I am,” Shkutko sings in Russian. luxuriates in restlessness.
Lyrics describe days without sleep, how winter is unrelenting, and why love, if it even exists, sits too far away. Throughout, Shkutko wails: on “Черные .