A Place to Bury Strangers
Exploding Head
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Mute
Some bands want to be your friends, some bands want to make you happy, some bands want you to think they’re cool and some bands want to shatter your hearing. New York trio A Place to Bury Strangers has a reputation for being one of the loudest bands in the country. Their MySpace page says “Total Sonic Annihilation” and Death by Audio is the name of their rehearsal/recording space and guitarist Oliver Ackermann’s custom guitar pedal company, which has made gear for no less than My Bloody Valentine. The title of their new album conjures a Scanners-like image of people’s heads spontaneously erupting at their shows.
Exploding Head is the band’s second album and their first for venerable label Mute. Their self-titled debut was actually a remastered collection of earlier recordings and so this, in some ways, is their first proper album. They can perhaps be called heavy shoegaze or power shoegaze. At their best they recall two of the touchstone records of that movement, the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. Though Ackermann stated that they began the record with the ambition to create “the craziest, most fucked-up recording ever,” there are both melodies and keener songcraft, with production sheen courtesy of Andy Smith, who has engineered David Bowie and Paul Simon records.
There’s also a distinctly mid-’80s/early ’90s British feel to the album, with its dark atmospherics, layered guitars, hollow vocals and brooding lyrics. This expanded palette doesn’t come at the expense of the band’s considerable power and volume. You will still feel assaulted by the sonic equivalent of a sledgehammer. The album is loaded with dense sheets of guitars and echo-y, almost buried vocals that sound as if they’re coming out of a hurricane. “It is Nothing” has a relentless, driving rhythm and big, heavy guitars that seem to engulf you. “In Your Heart” has mechanical, almost industrial drums, clanging guitars and an intense Joy Division-like drive. The biggest surprise on the album is the catchy surf guitar that opens “Deadbeat” and wouldn’t sound out of place on a B-52′s album. Needless to say, it’s soon drowned out in a squall of noise. Like My Bloody Valentine before them, they find the point where the guitars are both pummeling and almost soothing.
Elsewhere, there’s something like a spooky, post-punk gothic vibe. “Lost Feeling” has crushing, primal drumming, droning guitars and swirling psych-sounds that evoke early Cure. If someone decides to remake The Hunger, they could be the house band instead of Bauhaus, playing the textured, moody and close to danceable (at least if you’re a pale vampire) “Exploding Head.” Yet there’s an aggression to the band that often transcends their influences and something like “Ego Death,” despite its aura of menace and doom, is much too heavy and explosive for the black eyeliner crowd.
If there’s a fault with the album it’s that it borders on monotony in places and it can be exhausting to listen to in one sitting, as it demands to be heard with the volume cranked. But it is a strong contender for the guitar album of the year and A Place to Bury Strangers are the loud band of the moment.
