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Exploding Head
Rating: 6.0 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
You can call it noise-rock, shoe-gaze, psychedelic, or all three; just don’t call it the second coming of My Bloody Valentine or The Jesus and Mary Chain. Brooklyn’s A Place To Bury Strangers are big on dark atmospheric textures and bigger on blandness. On the opening track “It Is Nothing” from their latest album Exploding Head – an astounding guitar intro reminiscent of an accelerating Formula One race car convinces you that something special lies ahead; unfortunately what waits for you are synthetic sounding drums and monotone vocals shooting for detached heart-broken nihilism and hitting a notch above one of the goth kids from South Park. As a whole “It Is Nothing,” is a microcosm of the album- fuzzed out spastic noise fits and shimmering industrial tones from pedal wizard Oliver Ackerman entice, sadly they also remain the only enjoyable element- this theme purveys throughout the album. Numbed out monotone vocals have always been coupled with abrasive tones as a form of sonic balance and there is nothing wrong with that, but when when Ackerman utters “what, what the fuck, don’t play with my heart” on the mid album track “Dead beat,” it is nearly laughable. Boring Vocals aside, on “Ego Death” Ackerman channels the spirit of late-great Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton by conjuring layer after layer of maniacal treble waves and dissonance- tricking you into believing that every time he steps on his distortion pedal a rocket explodes into orbit. Dubbed “the loudest band in New York,” A Place To Bury Strangers may very well be an impressive live act, but that spirit does not justly translate to the tangible realm. (Mute Records) 6.0
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