It’s an age-old story —someone steps into your life, sets the whole joint ablaze, then vanishes, leaving you in the smoke. You’re left wondering if it was just a flash of lust or something deeper, but either way, you’re not alright. You’re lost, desperate, and drowning in a sea of hopeless desire, clutching at the thought that maybe, just maybe, their heartbeat could set yours straight again.
Disgust is the inferno stoking the fires of NYC stalwarts A Place To Bury Strangers, a blistering single that’s as much a paradox as it is punishing. It’s ferocious yet sluggish, with scorching guitar riffs colliding with droll, detached vocals—all smothered under a thick wall of distortion and screeching shoegaze. The song’s all open strings, letting Ackermann play it with one hand, his fist defiantly raised in the air—a move as tongue-in-cheek as the song’s high-pitched guitar battle cry, which Ackermann claims is designed to drive listeners away.
It’s this sardonic spirit, this playful yet calculated approach to music and live performance, that’s been the band’s calling card. For over two decades, they’ve been turning expectations on their head, blending brutality with irony in a way that only A Place To Bury Strangers can. Ben Hozie’s glitch-laden, psychedelic lo-fi video wraps the whole package in a haze of chaos, perfectly capturing the frenetic energy that surrounds the band’s sound. It’s a thrilling, disorienting ride.
Watch the video for “Disgust” below:
Born in Brooklyn in 2003, APTBS sprang from Oliver Ackermann’s hallucinatory vision, fusing post-punk, noise-rock, shoegaze, and psychedelia into a sound that’s anything but safe. For over two decades, they’ve been battering and bewildering audiences with ferocious live shows, packed with searing visuals, experimental sonic assaults, and daring stage antics that leave no room for complacency.
Synthesizer is the title of A Place to Bury Strangers’ seventh album. In an era of making music where so little is DIY and so much is left up to AI, to never setting foot in a practice room or a home studio, making something that feels deliberately chaotic, messy, and human, is entirely the point. Synthesizer is a record that celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community.
“It’s pretty messed up, chaotic,” says frontman Oliver Ackermann, “But it feels really human.”
The writing sessions for Synthesizer started in 2022 in the band’s Queens studio, shortly after the release of See Through You. A Place to Bury Strangers re-formed with a new lineup, Ackermann still at the helm, now featuring friends John and Sandra Fedowitz.
Synthesizer, out October 4 via Ackermann’s Dedstrange label, is poised to be one of A Place to Bury Strangers’ most live-sounding records to date.
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