by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

If anything, last night’s Molchat Doma/Sextile show at Steelhouse Omaha proved that the massive, blimp-hangar-style facility can host shows that only draw 1/3 of its capacity and still feel like an important event.

Los Angeles electronic-fueled post-punk act Sextile — no stranger to Omaha — was up first and scored the better of the two performances, thanks to a shorter set and more varied and frenetic music. Sextile’s heart-racing, jittery rhythms, infectious bass lines and unlimited energy generated by three bouncing musicians did everything it could to get the (guess-timated) crowd of around 1,000 moving. 

Throughout their 10-year careers, Sextile has always been more punk than post-punk, and never moreso than on their aggressive new album, Yes, Please., slated for release May 2 on Sacred Bones Records. New songs like “Women Respond to Bass,” “Kids,” “S Is For” and set closer “Resist” — wherein vocalist/instrumentalist Melissa Scaduto hoisted a flag emblazed with “Abortion Rights Now!” — were among the night’s highlights. 

Long-time Sextile fans yearning for past glories were not disappointed. The set opened with 2018 favorite “Disco,” and included tracks “No Fun” and “Contortion” from 2023’s Push. Instrumentally, Scaduto and fellow front-person Brady Keehn impressed with their stick-work and knob twirling when not spitting lyrics at the crowd. 

A fellow concert-goer pointed out the music would be perfect at 2 a.m. in a crowded, smoke-filled warehouse while high on some unidentified substance, instead of at 8:30 on a Monday night drinking a lukewarm microbrew. Maybe that’s why so few were moving on the floor beyond the edge of the stage. Ah, to be honest, the only band I’ve seen turn an Omaha crowd that size into a bouncing a mob was The Faint.

Shortly after 9 p.m., Molchat Doma took the blackened stage, each band member staking out his territory – bassist Pavel Kozlov stage left, guitarist Roman Komogortsev stage right, and frontman Egor Shkutko dead center. And that’s where they stayed throughout the evening while someone somewhere controlled the prerecorded synth and rhythm tracks that fueled the performance. 

“We are Molchat Doma from Minsk, Belarus,” Egor quietly declared after the first song. “Dosvedanya.” 

The basic song recipe involved a drone/tone intro followed by a kick-ass rhythm track, Pavel’s bassline and Roman’s guitar. It’s easy to point out the obvious influences – Depeche Mode, The Cure, Joy Division, etc. A fellow concert-goer gave nods to Nitzer Ebb and Front Line Assembly.

But despite the rump-shakingly infectious rhythms and guitars, Egor’s dark, bosso voice eventually transported listeners to a drab, Soviet-era landscape covered in brutalist architecture. It was like listening to a soldier sing mournful Russian-language anthems over a wicked EDM loop.

Early in the set, the audience, which included a lot of younger people dressed in black, many donning their best goth styles and make-up, merely nodded their heads to the beat. But as you walked deeper into the crowd, you noticed the bodies moving oh so subtly, the energy increasing closer to the stage. I’m unsure where these fans came from, as Molchat Doma has never played Omaha before and isn’t heard on local radio. The answer is probably those viral TikTok videos, apparently as popular here as in Eastern Bloc countries.

Despite shifts in rhythm and melodies — and instrumental interludes (in one instance, Pavel and Roman met centerstage and exchanged riffs) — the music’s “sameness” was unescapable thanks to being draped in dirge-like vocals. How would their music sound with English-language pop vocals? No doubt it would lose its gravitas — and to some, become more interesting — but it would never be Molchat Doma. And to that, all I can say is “Dosvedanya.”

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2025 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Monday Night is Show Night in Omaha™  Now there’s a catchphrase the Omaha entertainment business community can really get behind. Or how about: Weekends Are Made for Locals™. 

Listen, we can thank tour routing for the abundance of Monday night (and weekday night) touring indie shows, since we’re located between major markets like KC, Minneapolis and Chicago. Bands could simply take the night off, but they come here anyway, even if it makes for some bleary-eyed Tuesday mornings. 

This Monday night is all about the EDM (as in electronic dance music) of Molchat Doma and Sextile at Steelhouse Omaha. I won’t rehash what I already said last week. Go back and check out the Lazy-i Ten Questions interview with Molchat Doma.

Glancing at Molchat Doma’s setlist from last Friday night’s show in Chicago, expect a 14-song set with 4-song encore, including their viral hit “Sudno.” I’d list the other song titles, but let’s face it – no one reading this is that familiar with the band or their catalog. 

And here’s a review of the Oct. 19, 2023, Sextile show at The Waiting Room. Attendance was a wee bit light that evening, and as I wrote in the review, I could only imagine how the performance compared to, say, a sold-out Terminal 5 show in Brooklyn. For the record, Sextile played 12 songs at their Feb. 19 Toronto gig. Here’s the setlist. 

I’ve never been to a show at Steelhouse that wasn’t either sold out or close to selling out. Will tonight be a first?

When I interviewed Omaha Performing Arts President Joan Squires and Steelhouse Director of Booking Erika Hansen back in 2023 for my column in The Reader (online here), I asked how they’d handle shows that draw fewer than 1,000. Squires said the space may not be appropriate for those shows, which would be a better fit for small O-pa-operated venues like the Holland Music Club. However, Hansen said Steelhouse is flexible and has options, including the use of retractable risers. I’ve yet to see those risers in action.

The sheer fact that Steelhouse was willing to gamble on this show, however, is a credit to Omaha Performing Arts. Let’s see if the gamble pays off tonight. Tickets to the show are still available at steelhouseomaha.com. Showtime is 8 p.m. Bring your dancing shoes.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2025 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Belarusian post-punk/cold wave/synth-fueled EDM trio Molchat Doma was founded in 2017 in Minsk. And like their origin implies, there is drama in everything they do. Even their name — translated to English — means “Houses Are Silent.” Could anything sound more foreboding?

The band — vocalist Egor Shkutko (Belarusian: Yahor Shkutko); Roman Komogortsev (Raman Kamahortsau) on guitar, synths and drum machine, and Pavel Kozlov on bass and synths — creates darkly urban, wholly modern synth-pop whose undertones and rhythms are familiar to anyone who grew up listening to Depeche Mode, Human League, The Cure, and so on. 

The band sites Perestroika-era Russian groups such as Kino as an influence, and you can hear shadows of Kraftwerk in their early work. As their one-sheet oh so accurately describes: “The band gained a following with earlier albums that sound like third-generation bootlegs of banned recordings from the Eastern Bloc made after a few key entries in the Factory Records catalog were smuggled in from the West.” 

Tracks off their 2017 self-released debut, S Krysh Nashikh Domov (translated via Google as From the Roofs of Our Houses), such as “Ludi Nadoeli,” (“People are Boring”), could be mistaken for early, upbeat Joy Division, except for the Russian lyrics.

According to Pitchfork, one of Molchat Doma’s early breaks came in April 2020 when their song “Судно (Sudno)” was used in a viral TikTok video clip that garnered over 6 million views, sparking listeners on Spotify. Then (according to the Chicago Reader), an Australian taste-maker uploaded the band’s 2018 album, Etazhi, onto YouTube, which caught the attention of hip Brooklyn record label Sacred Bones, who signed the band and reissued their early works. 

Sacred Bones released Mochat Doma’s third album, Monument, in 2020 in the shadow of the pandemic. The band was forced to hold off on its first U.S. tour, but would eventually play major festival stages, including Coachella and Cruel World in 2022. 

Over the years, their sound has evolved from shadowy, minimalist post-punk into the shiny, pulsing, black-lit EDM heard on their most recent release, 2024’s Belaya Polosa. Completed in their new home of Los Angeles, their label called it “a testament to change in difficult times, a love letter to the digital pulse of the ‘90s, and a technicolor reinvention of the band’s somber dancefloor anthems.”

The trio has been selling out venues throughout its current tour, which brings them to Steelhouse Omaha Monday, Feb. 24. They generously took the Lazy-i Ten Questions survey. Here’s what they had to say:

1. What is your favorite album?

Yahor: Moby – All Visible Objects

Pavel: Tool – Lateralus

Raman: Puma Blue – Holy Waters

2. What is your least favorite song?

“APT” by Bruno Mars and Rose

3. What do you enjoy most about being in a band?

Touring. We all love touring. Every time we hit the road we feel ourselves alive.

4. What do you hate about being in a band?

Being homesick. We all have families and sometimes it’s really hard being too far from them.

5. What is your favorite substance (legal or illegal)?

We all love a lure. We are crazy about this bait. 

6. In what city or town do you love to perform (and why)?

There are so many cities where we love to play. Always pleasure to play in our residence city, LA. NYC is so special too. Europe is definitely different, but Berlin, London, and Paris are so good to play. 

7. What city or town did you have your worst gig (and why)?

That was several years ago in Minsk, Belarus. We were so drunk and played as shit. We still feel ashamed.

8. Are you able to support yourself through your music? If so, how long did it take to get there; if not, how do you pay your bills?

Yes, it became possible when we started growing in popularity in 2020. We toured a lot and continue to tour to this day, plus streaming and merch helps us pay our bills.

9. What one profession other than music would you like to attempt; what one profession would you absolutely hate to do?

Certainly none of us would like to go back to our previous jobs, which we did before music – working in construction. In fact, I don’t want to try any other professions, since we get great pleasure from what we are doing now. Well, maybe a civil aviation pilot.

10. What stories have you heard about Omaha, Nebraska?

We don’t know anything about this place, but we hope to have a very good experience and enjoy being there!

Molchat Doma plays with Sextile at Steelhouse Omaha Monday, Feb. 24. Tickets range from $27.50 to $65. For more information, go to steelhouseomaha.com

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2025 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.