Review Summary: With a whole arsenal of crunching, gritty, noisy guitars drenched in feedback, loose atmospheres, and echoing vocals, A Place to Bury Strangers' debut is a mechanical work of shoegaze art.
How loud is this freaking band? A Place to Bury Strangers are perhaps one of the loudest bands on record and in concert ever created. These men blast their amps at their peak in a mixture of noise, atmosphere, and rhythm not found in most shoegaze bands. This band has true potential to become a giant in the genre way after the peak of shoegaze-A Place to Bury Strangers echo that gravity that captured the era damn well, eschewing lots of noise, atmospheric, techno-laden drums, and an altogether manufactured sound. It’s nothing revolutionary, creative, and in fact it’s all been done before. However, this album is so critical in a time where music is being confined into one small expected experiment, A Place to Bury Strangers shatter all notions of what to do in music. Harking back to the burgeoning of the genre and movement, it’s a bass busting, treble destroying venture in noise and adventure that never overwhelms. As far as debut albums go A Place to Bury Strangers’ self-titled is one of the best.
Less than 5 seconds into ‘To Fix the Gash in Your Head’, the guitars and bass annihilate the track in industrial noise before it goes off into a spacey rhythm characterized by the blistering techno-drum beat. If you think noise can’t be refined or have rhythm, you are far from the truth. ‘Gash’ and ‘Don’t Think Lover’ throw away those notions, the latter opening up with a near painful expedition into feedback and high gain before slowing down into a catchy little beat as Oliver Ackermann (the vocalist) hangs in the background playing with the atmosphere and echoing vocals, allowing the brutal psychedelic wall of sound to usher in the next phase of the song. The echo plays a large part in creating the dense wall of sound so abundant on the album, creating a punishing sound that fades into a visceral beat all too often. The album sounds very mechanical, choppy, and electric; which is a huge trait of a good shoegaze band.
A Place to Bury Strangers, however, do not adhere to the ‘shoegaze’ standard. The name came from a critic making fun of live performances from these band, but A Place to Bury Strangers pack so much volume into their album and live performances that it’s impossible not to get enveloped in their music. When the guitars strike, it’s a cut through the eardrum and when the bass blows the adrenaline starts pumping. A Place to Bury Strangers know how to craft the most extreme noise rock into a relative pop song and keep the audience interested, both on recording and in performance. And that’s where the band truly stands out.
‘My Weakness’ shows the other side of the band. Still including the heavy, wall of sound psychedelic nature, the song is much more accessible. The vocals are rid of the present echo, and the noise, for the most part takes the background. The chorus is nearly catchy, and the song is quite rhythmic. The drenched echo that defines the album is sorely missed, however the vocals are nothing to write home about without the defining, drained echo. The album’s true experience shines on the epic closer, ‘Ocean’. Opening up with a spacey, dreary rhythm and drone, it fades into a slower verse and some reverb-drenched guitar riffs. The vocals are condensed in echo and smushed back into the mix with lots of wah-wah, it spreading from speaker to speaker with the atmosphere in front of the vocals. The song continues in this never-ending verse until the absolute sonic destruction at the end, literally sounding as if 20 trains had collided all at once, and being broadcasted through your speakers. The sound is pushed up so loud dynamically, and the bass blisters with the treble cutting right through the visceral sound barrier, and ending as abruptly as the venture began on the album.
The multitude of mechanical, cold, industrial atmospheres created by A Place to Bury Strangers via reverb, high gain, spacey programming, technical drumming, and lots of echo makes their debut album an astonishing feat in an era where shoegaze and noise rock is all but a distant memory. The modern programming and production keeps the album in the current era, but the noise and style is clearly a bit of a throwback. The band does not venture very far away from the core of noise and their trusty wall-of-sound (which they create amazingly well live, by the way), which may keep the album in neutral for many people, but the variety of rhythms, riffs, and small little tricks makes this debut album worth listening.
