It’s the first full week of October and Exploding Head
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“Building on the eardrum shattering force of their debut, and now housed in the cathedral of unrelenting noise that is Mute, A Place To Bury Strangers return atop a wagon load of crunching, distorted riffs on new vehicle Exploding Head. “
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In fact, to an unsuspecting listener, A Place To Bury Strangers’ newest album, Exploding Head might as well be the most badass thing they have ever heard. That is because it is.
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Songs like “In Your Heart” and “Keep Slipping Away” skilfully weave screeching feedback, crusty guitar and engaging melodies in a way that still sounds heady a quarter-century after Psychocandy blew minds.
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There isn’t a bad track on Exploding Head. It’s a solid, accomplished album with no filler and few misteps.
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Exploding Head is less an interpretation of a forgotten sound than a restoration of an abandoned mission.
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Now with Exploding Head, APTBS has refined its industrial shoegaze into something more tuneful, but no less brutal. Actual songs peek out from under the great morass of singer Oliver Ackermann’s scathing guitars.
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That A Place To Bury Strangers would allow their sound to evolve in a more accessible direction isn’t particularly surprising. But the fact that they also took the noisiest, most gut-wrenching aspects of their music and cranked them even higher makes this evolution even more intriguing, and just plain kickass.
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A Place to Bury Strangers answers to these, with what just might be the best Post-Punk Revival record since Interpol’s debut.
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“Head is most assuredly a maturation, from the songwriting right down to the fancy effects-pedal driven magic that frontman Oliver Ackermann is so rightfully lauded for (Ackermann famously crafts customized pedals through his Death By Audio company for artists like TV On the Radio and U2, but has apparently saved some of the coolest tricks for his own band).”
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