A Place To Bury Strangers - Transfixiation + I Know I'll See You 7''

The shrill white noise, the all-black-everything wardrobe and demeanor, the Blanco y Negro Records worship: These are the proverbial primary colours of A Place to Bury Strangers, so the Jesus and Mary Chain were always going to be their most obvious comparison. But as their albums increasingly become advertorials for their outside business ventures and incapacitating concert experience, Jimmy Buffett might be the more accurate comparison. Can’t knock the hustle, though—APTBS’ rather impressive longevity is due in large part to knowing their audience, and on their fourth LP Transfixiation, the mere titles of "Now It’s Over", "Filling the Void" and "I Will Die" let you know it caters to the indoor sunglasses crowd as expertly as "Too Drunk to Karaoke" and "Oldest Surfer on the Beach" did to the Croakies set.
As with all of APTBS’ previous work, Transfixiation is full of noise, though it’s not necessarily noisy. The blistered, red-hot distortion and shrieking feedback are purposeful noise, the kind that’s typically a cloaking device within indie rock—either for a pure pop predilection, hurt feelings, or at worst, a disinclination for song craft. In this case, the noise is a feint for an underlying ambition; even as Oliver Ackermann finds new ways to subject his guitars to circuitry S&M, APTBS have increasingly given the impression that they want to be seen as more than "the guy who makes guitar pedals."
And so Transfixiation emphasizes its rhythm section, which in turn emphasizes that APTBS are a band. It’s not surprising that when given more a showcase, bassist Dion Lunadon relies on the steady menace of early Peter Hook or the high-fretted melodicism of later Peter Hook. That doesn’t mean it’s ineffective—"Straight" is the most instantly memorable track if only because it recalls a jacked-up version of Radiohead’s "Myxomatosis" while "Supermaster" and "We’ve Come So Far" rely on pure velocity. APTBS don’t actually deal much in hooks, so the semblance of danceable rhythm is a proper substitute.
It’s not a huge shift from 2012’s relatively streamlined Worship, which itself wasn’t a huge shift from its predecessor Exploding Head. APTBS’ progress has been incremental over the years, so Transfixiation derives much of its success from being compared to their 2007 breakthrough— those who have been following since A Place to Bury Strangers can recognize the band’s evolution and justifies their own investment. Those who are coming into Transfixiation blind might just hear a notable band boasting a currently rare commitment to a '80s kind of noise-rock rather than the '90s iterations of shoegaze, Goth, or industrial that’s more prominent in 2015.
Then again, APTBS’ progress as a band only serves to expose the underlying one-dimensionality of their actual song writing. This is a style of music rarely lauded for its lyrics in general, let alone its topical range—it’s probably too much to ask for a political A Place to Bury Strangers song or a tripartite prog epic, or a gooey love note just to shake things up. But for a band whose songs so frequently draw on the depths of despair, incapacitating depression, and occasional kink for inspiration, the grousing of Transfixiation feels perfunctory. However admirable "Filling the Void", "I’m So Clean" and "Love High" are for their sonic formalism, the songs themselves are like fortune cookies filled with quotes from latter day Trent Reznor or the @sosadtoday Twitter feed.
Case in point, "Deeper"—a generous reading would frame it as a devastating parody. An accurate reading would frame it as the six-minute nadir of APTBS’ fourth album. The chorus goes, "Deeper, deeper, deeper still/ Deeper than the deepest well," which isn’t the funniest part only because Ackermann adopts a Christian Bale-as-Batman baritone to taunt, "if you fuck with me, you’re gonna burn" right before it. Occasionally, APTBS traffic in a speed freak roadhouse blues that recall a mondo distorted version of Suicide; conversely, "Deeper" is the first song ever to be conceivably inspired by Rollins Band’s legendary high comic cover of "Ghost Rider". If The Crow: 2037 ends up getting a release, "Deeper" would do well to soundtrack the rain-soaked resurrection of whoever that year's version of Edward Furlong happens to be.
But zone out from "Deeper" and, combined with its instrumental successor "Lower Zone", Transfixiation is capable sludge-goth ambience. Regardless of its issues, it never distracts from intimating the same old points: Ackermann makes expensive guitar pedals and the band plays with a ferocity that will make theirs the only show you’ll want to see for the next month—and due to its ear-splitting volume, maybe the only show you’ll physically be able to hear for a month. So whenever the temptation to lend a closer ear to Transfixiation arises, you should know better by now.
By Ian Cohen

A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

Though A Place to Bury Strangers called their second album Exploding Head, it's arguable that their debut, with its walls of low-rent distortion and abrasive beats, was more cranium-crushing. Even if the band's move to Mute resulted in cleaner, ever-so-slightly calmer surroundings for their music, A Place to Bury Strangers' sound and song-writing have more power and nuance here, as well as more structure; nearly every song balances the black-on-black menace of their debut with pop appeal. Nowhere is this clearer than on "It Is Nothing," which opens the album with a three-minute burst of buzzsaw guitars, or on "Lost Feeling," which boasts a subtle tension and dive-bombing dynamics that wouldn't have been possible on the band's debut. This faithfulness to shoegaze's dark side sets A Place to Bury Strangers apart from many of their fellow revivalists who favour wispy, cotton-candy clouds of sound. Befitting their name, the band is still obsessed with death and destruction, be it physical or spiritual (as on the aptly fuzzed-out epic "Ego Death"). Interestingly, Exploding Head's more polished production brings out some of the more retro elements in the band's music, underscoring their fondness for Goth, synth pop (and in Deadbeat's case, surf rock) as well as their shoegaze foundations. They sound more like a pissed-off, guitar-enhanced New Order than ever on "In Your Heart," and close the album with "I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart," which offers heroic doses of pure effect pedal-stomping heaven. At times, listeners of a certain age will swear they heard one of these songs on college radio or saw one of the band's videos on 120 Minutes or Post-Modern MTV ("Slipping Away" in particular has the feeling of a forgotten classic) and that's a compliment. Exploding Head is a fine step forward for A Place to Bury Strangers, and shows they're among the best bands bringing shoegaze into the 21st century.

A Place To Bury Strangers - A Place To Bury Strangers (UK Promo)

From the opening blast of overdriven guitars and hyperkinetic drums it's apparent A Place to Bury Strangers, self-described "loudest band in New York," want to pummel you into submission with their unique take on white noise-derived guitar splendour, but then a hypnotic single-string riff takes over to briefly deliver a respite from the assault, recalling the classic era of shoegaze. The swirling atmosphere of guitar feedback and reverb-drenched vocals immediately bring to mind the most obvious comparison: vintage Jesus and Mary Chain. And while the Mary Chain circa Psychocandy evoked the Beach Boys on bad acid or the the Shirelles gigging poolside at the Manson family compound, A Place to Bury Strangers also evoke a host of noisy early-'90s British bands like My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Ride, Chapterhouse, Pale Saints, and the Catherine Wheel without sounding exactly like any of them. These bands knew how to cloak their essentially straightforward and anthemic rock songs in layers upon layers of guitar effects to lend an air of psychedelia and psychosis to what without that noisy dressing would strip down to candy-coated pop confections. And what A Place to Bury Strangers indeed do is write pop songs, with simple, traditional arrangements, primarily in slightly menacing minor keys, and saturated with their own unique brand of sonic mayhem. This is facilitated by the fact that their guitarist/singer designs his own effects pedals at his day job, allowing for a trademark-able and wide variety of signature bombastic sounds (he also does custom work for illustrious members of other similarly minded space rockers). Many songs, like the obvious single "To Fix the Gash in Your Head," feature a pile-driving drum machine enhancement which adds to the multiple layers and recalls a time when dark dream pop (Curve, Slowdive, the Telescopes) and dancefloor-friendly goth rock (Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, early New Order) were club mainstays. And aside from the lone doom-laden ballad "The Falling Sun," these songs are actually danceable, or perhaps moshable, when delivered at the proper volume. The majority of the album keeps up the frenetic onslaught with which it opens, and even amongst the caustic thrash and thick slabs of sonic detritus there is exhilaration, a catharsis, a beauty in the cacophony, and the listener is happily buried in the ear-splitting bliss. Many albums' liner notes suggest the listener should "PLAY THIS LOUD", but in this case it's never been more essential.