Late last year, New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — released their seventh album Synthesizer through Dedstrange.
While Synthesizer is the album’s title, it’s also a physical entity, a synthesizer specifically made for the album — and a synthesizer that you too, can own (in part), if you buy the record on vinyl. The album’s cover art doubles as a circuit board and functional synth for curious and enterprising fans. “It’s pretty messed up, chaotic. But it feels really human,” the band’s Oliver Ackermann says.
In an era of making music where so little is DIY and so much is left up to AI, never setting foot in a practice room or a home studio, making something that feels deliberately chaotic, messy, and human, is entirely the point. The album celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community.
The writing sessions for Synthesizer started in the band’s Queens studio, shortly after the release of 2022’s See Through You. The new lineup which featured Ackermann and his friends John and Sandra Fedowitz was especially inspiring for Ackermann. “It felt like a fresh new thing,” he says. “I wanted to write songs everyone was excited about playing.”
The album captures the band at a place of reinvention, where they take a carefully honed sound and approach and crack it wide open to gut its then reimagine it. And of course, to ever so slightly reinvent one’s sound, one must also built a new instrument — the synthesizer at the core of the album’s overall sound.
Synthesizer may arguably be one of the band’s most live-sounding albums to date, accurately capturing the rawness and explosiveness of the band in a live setting, which is a fitting for a band that is best in a live setting, where the material takes on a new energy in the presence of a crowd. “We’re artists,” Ackermann says, “Going to shows and bringing that imperfect and beautiful DIY ethos is important.”
Album single “Fear Of Transformation” is a snarling and scuzzy New Wave/goth punk synth-driven ripper featuring layers of oscillating synths, a relentless motorik groove, explosive bursts of feedback paired with the band’s long-held penchant for rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly hooks and Ackermann’s punchy delivery.
Thematically, the track focuses and delves into the struggle of overcoming internal barriers. As the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann explains, “Sometimes fear builds up and pins you in a cage. A conversation occurs in my head where I have to convince myself to just fucking do something to break out of it.” The song embodies that internal dialogue, capturing the battle between the compulsion to avoid fear and the push to confront it. And as a result, the song is a raw, uneasy and intense conversation with the devil within.
Acclaimed Danish producer and multi-instrumentalist Trentemøller recently gave “Fear of Transformation,” the remix treatment. The Trentemøller remix adds harder, big beat era-like beats, which manages to add an even darker, industrial electronica-like feel to song. The thematic conversation with the devil at the core of the song has much higher stakes: Damnation and destruction or salvation, which will you choose?
A Place to Bury Strangers have a long-held reputation for being road warriors and will be embarking on a lengthy European tour in April 2025 with dates in France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Greece.
The band will return to North America for a three-week tour that includes a ROCKS OFF show on May 30, 2025.
APTBS 2025 SYNTHESIZER TOUR
2025 Synthesizer European Tour
April 10 – Le 106 – Rouen, France
April 11 – QUAI M – La Roche-sur-yon, France
April 12 – L’Astrolabe – Orleans, France
April 13 – La Gaîté Lyrique – Paris, France
April 15 – Magasin 4 – Brussels, Belgium
April 16 – Trix – Antwerpen, Belgium
April 17 – Vera – Groningen, Netherlands
April 18 – Doornroosje – Nijmegen, Netherlands
April 21 – Plan B – Malmö, Sweden
April 22 – Parkteatret Scene – Oslo, Norway
April 24 – Kuudes Linja – Helsinki, Finland
April 25 – Paavli Kultuurivabrik – Tallinn, Estonia
April 26 – Tallinas Kvartāla Angārs – Rīga, Latvia
April 27 – Kultūros kompleksas SODAS2123 – Vilnius, Lithuania
April 29 – Klub Gwarek – Kraków, Poland
April 30 – fuchs2 Hlavní Město – Praha, Czechia
May 02 – ARCH Club – Live Stage – Athina, Greece
May 03 – Block 33 – Thessaloniki, Greece
2025 Synthesizer North American Tour
May 14 – Higher Ground – South Burlington, VT
May 15 – Bar Le Ritz PDB – Montreal, Canada
May 16 – Lee’s Palace – Toronto, Canada
May 17 – The Magic Bag – Ferndale, MI
May 18 – Grog Shop – Cleveland, OH
May 20 – Ace of Cups – Columbus, OH
May 21 – Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
May 22 – Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
May 23 – Headliners Music Hall – Louisville, KY
May 24 – The Blue Room – Nashville, TN
May 27 – Richmond Music Hall – Richmond, VA
May 28 – Ottobar – Baltimore, MD
May 29 – Ukrainian American Citizens’ Association (Ukie Club on Franklin) – Philadelphia, PA
May 30 – ROCKS OFF – New York, NY
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