Four years ago, the Belarusian post-punk band Molchat Doma 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 Belaya Polosa, 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 Monument, Molchat Doma’s last album, was dominated by leaden Bauhaus guitars, Belaya Polosa whirrs with Tangerine Dream’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.
Belaya Polosa 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 Цветы / Chernye Cvety,” singing of disillusionment over a silky Cocteau Twins groove; on “Не Вдвоëм / Ne Vdvoem,” a yacht rock song for goths; on “Колесом / Kolesom,” while he’s being barraged by synth hail. The album’s indulgent hopelessness is best encapsulated by the image of the passive, watching moon in “Зимняя / Zimnyaya,” a song whose effervescent melody spills bitterly, like old champagne.
But for how morose it is, Belaya Polosa also twitches with agitated energy. Its best moments are its firework flashes, the synth sparkles and bass booms on songs like “Белая Полоса / Belaya Polosa,” which prop up Shkutko’s continually sinking feelings. “Я Так Устал / Ya Tak Ustal” likewise features a delightfully maximalist synth whine, circling Shkutko’s desperation like a hopeful ring of sunlight. But moments when that energy falters—like on the torpid intermission, “Безнадежный Вальс / Beznadezhniy Waltz,” or when you realize you’re listening to the same drum tone for the fifth song in a row—drag the album down to melodramatic lows.
Still, Belaya Polosa communicates the same dust-covered nostalgia that made Molchat Doma so appealing to housebound TikTok users in 2020. Their brand of ’80s pastiche offers one kind of safety in an otherwise dangerous world. My Bulgarian mother always tells me that we—Eastern Europeans, or maybe just people with anxiety disorders—are destined to suffer. While contemporary political and personal unrest continues to invade the lives of Molchat Doma’s members—and those of many other people—their music remains firmly rooted in the past. Even if it’s not entirely innovative, it offers a sense of security, and that can be its own reward.
