New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — released a rarities album Rare and Deadly earlier this year through Dedstrange.
Following 2024’s Synthesizer, Rare and Deadly sees the band cracking open a decade-long vault of raw nerve and sonic chaos. Spanning 2015-2025, this collection of demos, B-sides, abandoned experiments and forgotten fragments reveals the band at their most unfiltered, frequently caught between breakthrough ideas and beautiful mistakes.
Pulled from Oliver Ackermann’s personal archive of late-night recordings, blown-out tapes and half-finished sessions, the collection’s tracks pulse with the unruly energy that ATPBS has long been known for, but more dangerous with more jagged edges — on purpose.
Countless bands have opened up their vaults to fans and others, but Rare and Deadly is truly unprecedented: Every format is different — and as a result, tells a different story. The CD, cassette, vinyl and digital editions each feature their own unique track listing. No single version features the “complete” album. Instead, each format is its own window into Ackermann’s archive, revealing alternate paths, missing links and parallel “what if” versions of the band’s inner life. It’s deliberately unstable with the album shifting depending on how you choose to hear it, mirroring the chaos of its creation.
Across the collection’s tracks, you can hear the evolution of Ackermann’s restlessly creative mind. Some pieces feel like prototypes for future chaos, seeds that later bloomed on studio albums. Others are dead ends — ideas too volatile, too strange or too personal to ever fit the frame of a proper release. The tracks feature riffs mutated by malfunctioning pedals, songs born from gear pushed past its limits, or delicate melodies overwhelmed by towering walls of feedback.
Rare and Deadly includes the previously released, “Everyone’s The Same,” “Acid Rain” “Where Are We Now” “Song for Girl From Macedonia” and the album’s final single “Time.” Anchored around a motorik pulse and swirling, feedback and distortion field guitars, “Time” sounds as though it could have been a B-side on Exploding Head. “The song stares down erosion — of belief, of certainty and trust — as faith slips through your fingers, no matter how tightly you grip,” the band explains. “Suspended between hope and collapse, ‘Time’ captures the quiet panic of watching something once solid slowly disappear, and the distorted beauty hat emerges when you keep moving forward even as meaning fractures and reforms.”
Directed by Steve Ward, the accompanying video for “Time” follows a man in a bright white jacket, as he runs around and dances with exploding camera flashes around him. If you or someone you know is photosensitive, this will be a difficult watch for you — but it captures the JOVM mainstay’s long-held live aesthetic.
The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on an UK and European Union tour with labelmates Die Ansalt throughout August and September. The band returns to the States for a fall run with ADULT. that includes a November 9, 2026 stop at Elsewhere. Check out the tour dates below.
EU Tour – w/ Die Anstalt
24 Aug – Concorde 2 – Brighton, United Kingdom
25 Aug – Sidney & Matilda – Sheffield, United Kingdom
26 Aug – The White Hotel – Manchester, United Kingdom
27 Aug – Stereo – Glasgow, United Kingdom
28 Aug – The Deers Head – Belfast, United Kingdom
29 Aug – Strange Brew – Gaillimh, Ireland
30 Aug – The Grand Social – Dublin, Ireland
02 Sep – The Hare and Hounds – Birmingham, United Kingdom
03 Sep – The Adrian Flux Waterfront – Norwich, United Kingdom
04 Sep – Papillon – Southampton, United Kingdom
05 Sep – The Piper – Saint Leonards-on-sea, United Kingdom
07 Sep – The Dome – London, United Kingdom
08 Sep – Anarchy Brew Co – Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom
09 Sep – The Bullingdon – Oxford, United Kingdom
US Tour – W/ Adult.
05 Nov – Assembly – Kingston, NY
06 Nov – The Sinclair – Boston, MA
07 Nov – Space Ballroom – Hamden, CT
09 Nov – Elsewhere – Brooklyn, NY
10 Nov – Underground Arts – Philadelphia, PA
11 Nov – Black Cat – Washington, DC
12 Nov – Richmond Music Hall – Richmond, VA
13 Nov – Eulogy – Asheville, NC
14 Nov – The Blue Room – Nashville, TN
16 Nov – Off Broadway – St. Louis, MO
17 Nov – Zanzabar – Louisville, KY
18 Nov – Ace of Cups – Columbus, OH
19 Nov – HI-FI – Indianapolis, IN
20 Nov – Metro Chicago – Chicago, IL
21 Nov – El Club – Detroit, MI
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