Back in the early aughts, when other New Yorkers were reviving rock or making twee tunes in their bedroom, A Place To Bury Strangers broke out with their own gothic/industrial sound as ‘The Loudest Band in New York’. However, they’ve outlived most of their contemporaries, even their own studio/tech space/music venue Death by Audio (QRO venue review), even what replaced it, VICE’s NYC HQ. Latest release Synthesizer is more of the pressing, noisy, dark APTBS that they’ve honed.
Despite the title, Synthesizer is best when it is pushing down that dark road, pedal to the metal with both guitars and oomph, such as the post-punk “Plastic Furniture”, the relatively catchier “Don’t Be Sorry”, the crashing “Bad Idea”, or the stark “You Got Me”. But there is also slower darkness (“Join the Crowd”) and washing tech (“It’s Too Much”).
Apparently goth music is back (according to finger-on-the-pulse-of-music The Economist), and while A Place To Bury Strangers don’t dress up, their music has held up all the up-and-down [currently looking very down…] years.
