A Place To Bury Strangers
Transfixiation (Dead Oceans)
There are two sides to being a band with a “definitive” sound. The good? You’ll get a loyal fan base who appreciate predictability. The bad? You run the risk of one album sounding like every album.
Brooklyn’s A Place To Bury Strangers are a very good rock band with a very definitive sound. Their music hits you like a relentless explosion of metal and stardust, leaving you in a mild state of discomfort – the way rock should be.
Transfixiation, their fourth studio album, is no exception. Second track “Straight” begins with what sounds like the revving of jet engine that you somehow hear in your throat before your ears.
“What We Don’t See”, perhaps the most melodic of the batch, has a wonderful psychedelic bounce, smashed into tiny fractals by guitarist Oliver Ackermann’s signature chain-link effect pedals that he is so well known for that he builds custom pedals for the likes of Nine Inch Nails and the late Lou Reed.
Recorded at the Brooklyn art-space-warehouse Death By Audio (which Ackermann founded) before its unfortunate demise in 2014, you can hear the DIY spirit behind the music. It is messy, it is muddy, it does not give a fuck about what you think. So much so that this album does not add nor detract from their repertoire, it simply blends into it.
Rating: ★★★.5
