A Full-On Sensory Assault

NY-based A Place To Bury Strangers opened for The Big Pink at the East Village’s Webster Hall. Having missed their previous shows in NYC, I jumped at the opportunity to catch them on March 30th.

On their first self-titled album they can be described as electro-industrial band — the songs dark, intense and fast-paced. Listening to it I could hear influences of The Cure’s earlier work (tell me you don’t think of The Cure’s “The Hanging Garden” when you hear the opening of “She Dies”?) and lead singer Oliver Ackermann’s voice seemed to have an Ian Curtis-like baritone quality to it. They are also heavily influenced by The Jesus And Mary Chain, whom they opened for at the same venue back in 2007. Their second album “Exploding Head” has them diving deeper into the distortion and heavier rock, moving away from the more synthesized ‘electro’ vibe of their first album and that is immediately evident in their live show.

They jumped right in with “To Fix The Gash in Your Head,” and opted for backlit halo-like lighting — which meant that the audience could only see their dark silhouettes. It was a pretty dramatic effect.

They are all about delivering the sound and it was evident very soon that their live element is what has earned them the reputation of being one of the loudest shows in NY. The performance was heavy with drums and distortion; at times the three of them even seemed to channel Nirvana, with their energy focused on getting as much distortion from their guitars and monitors as they could.

Photo Credit: A Place to Bury Strangers/MySpace

After about 25 minutes of going through the songs on their record they got to what I like to call “the shoegaze rock-out” part of the evening. When they reached the end of… Well does it even matter what song they were playing? You were suddenly hit with a sensory assault — the crowd-facing strobe lights came on, the smoke machine went into overdrive and the band, especially the drummer, seemed to disappear into a fog of smoke and lights – they went on like this for 10-15 minutes, over a steady bassline, guitars roaring. It was impossible not to get sucked in. (I was only briefly distracted by Moby standing behind me.)

My only complaint — if it could be considered that — would be that aside from a few standout songs like their opener and “I Know I’ll See You,” their songs all seemed to blend into each other. The show was less about the individual tracks than the entire experience.

I went back to listen to their first record to try and contrast the impact of their record with seeing them live and I realized I had been doing it wrong all this time. I just didn’t have it loud enough.

– Gulshan Kirat

Photo courtesy of A Place To Bury Strangers