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Guess what? I went to another concert! This time, I saw Molchat Doma on May 11th at the Harbour Convention Centre.
Molchat Doma is a Belarusian post-punk, synthwave band whose music is very doom and gloom. They currently have 3 albums out, but arguably their most popular is Этажи (“Etazhi”/”Floors” in English), released in 2018. Despite being a European band that only really sings in Russian, they picked up popularity in North America, and announced a 2023 tour featuring North American dates. Their latest album, Монумент (Monument), came out in 2020, and they were planning to tour that year, but…a certain illness prevented that from happening. This album, compared to Etazhi, is a bit more uptempo, and has some more synthpop elements to it. But rest assured, it still has that post-soviet Russian doom-feel that people seem to love.
Admittedly, I’m not a crazy huge fan of Molchat Doma. I definitely like their sound, and they have a decent number of songs that I really enjoy, but I wouldn’t say I’m one of their top listeners. I liked Etazhi a lot when it came out in 2018, but that was when I was in my goth music phase. I would listen to nothing but Joy Division, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, etc…basically anything adjacent to those bands. I will say, though, Joy Division is an all-time Sophie favorite, and Egor Shkutko, their lead vocalist, sounds a lot like Ian Curtis. Definitely one of my main draws to the band.
I found myself back at the Harbour Convention Centre less than week since I had been there last. This time around, I felt like I warmed up to the place a little more. The crowd was almost EXCLUSIVELY goth people, which was amazing. Lots of Russian-speaking people as well. One thing I noticed that initially confused me was the fact that a lot of people were wearing sunglasses…indoors, in the dark. I thought they were just wearing them for fashionable stylings, but then I realized why the glasses were actually a very smart choice; the STROBE LIGHTS. Maybe I’m just a little clueless, but I didn’t realize that part of their performance would include an aggressive use of strobes. I felt like I had a camera flashing in my face for the duration of their set, but it rocked. It was jarring at first, but once I got used to it, it made the performance feel very club-in-Berlin-that-you-don’t-remember-arriving-at.
The opener was a band called Nuovo Testamento, they’re an Italian synthwave band, kind of like a slightly more upbeat version of Molchat Doma. They sounded really good, but I unfortunately only caught the tail-end of their set.
Molchat Doma put on a very cool show. They were everything you’d expect them to be–dark, gothic, gloomy, brooding, but still had great stage presences. As I mentioned before, the lights were intense, but honestly made the show for me. I’m not a fan of big theatrics when it comes to live performances, but this completely excludes cool lighting effects. I eat that kinda stuff up.
The Molchat Doma show was overall very good! As someone who isn’t super into them, I really enjoyed it, and would definitely see them again.