Tag: noise punk

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Returns with Broodingly Atmospheric “Where Are We Now”

New York-based JOVM mainstays  A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing a rarities album, Rare and Deadly through Dedstrange on April 3, 2026. 

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 will include the previously released, tense and menacing “Everyone’s The Same,” “Acid Rain” and the album’s third and latest single “Where Are We Now.” “Where Are We Now” features Ackermann’s reverb-drenched vocal paired with broodingly atmospheric, throbbing motorik pulse. But more than any other previously released APTBS track, “Where Are We Now” conveys an uneasy sense of what if-fueled regret.

Ackermann says that the song is about “looking back at friends you lost touch with. Wondering where they ended up. Remembering when everything felt possible.”

The accompanying video features footage Ackermann edited from footage from the Library of Congress National Archives. Ackermann says he made the video because “I think we need to look at people more and see the value and wonder of life so we can be compassionate towards others.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Returns with Pulsing “Acid Rain”

New York-based JOVM mainstays  A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing a rarities album, Rare and Deadly through Dedstrange on April 3, 2026. 

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 will include the previously released, tense and menacing “Everyone’s The Same,” and the album’s second and latest single, “Acid Rain.” “Acid Rain” is a frustrated howl of a song, anchored around a relentlessly breakneck, motorik pulse, buzzing guitars, wild bursts of scorching feedback paired with Ackermann’s vocals, which are also fed through effects pedals.

“Acid Rain” was informed by the first Trump presidency. “Cruelty felt not just normalized, but weaponized. Watching people in power openly coerce others into silence, compliance, and violence was horrifying, and still is,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann explains. “What shook me most was how casual it all felt, how easily people turned their heads while others were being crushed.”

“The chanting at the beginning was recorded during the George Floyd protests in Manhattan and Brooklyn, real voices, real streets, real fear mixed with hope,” Ackermann adds. “For a moment, it felt like maybe people would finally wake up and refuse this racist machinery. But here we are, still watching detention centers, modern slavery, and countless other atrocities continue under different names. ‘Acid Rain’ is rage, grief, and disbelief all colliding at once, the sound of watching history repeat itself while knowing exactly how wrong it is.”

Directed by Gerson Vargas, the accompanying video was shot on January 16, 2026. The video follows the band as they get on the last car of a Manhattan-bound M train at Marcy Avenue, turning the subway car into a moving stage for a raucous live rendition of “Acid Rain” during the length of the Williamsburg Bridge into the Lower East Side. The guerilla-styled footage wasn’t scripted. There’s no script. And as a result, it perfectly captures the relentless pulse of the song and the city.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: A Place to Bury Strangers Share Menacing “Everyone’s The Same”

New York-based JOVM mainstays  A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing a rarities album, Rare and Deadly through Dedstrange on April 3, 2026.

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‘s first single “Everyone’s The Same” is anchored around a tense and menacing, motorik pulse and swirling, feedback-drenched guitar paired with Ackermann’s vocal, which manages to be simultaneously defiant, punchy and yearning.

“I had a dream where a man led me to a brook, peaceful and calm. When he turned his head slightly, I saw the most evil smile imaginable,” Ackermann says of the song. “But when I looked directly at him, it was just the back of his head again. Beauty and horror coexisting in the same space. It felt like hell leaking into something serene. Maybe that’s reality sometimes. And maybe pretending otherwise is a kind of survival.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: BUÑUEL Shares Bruising and Breakneck “High. Speed. Chase.”

BUÑUEL — OXBOW‘s Eugene S. Robinson, Afterhours and A Short Apnea‘s Xabier Iriondo (guitar), The Framers‘ Andrea Lombardini (bass) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori’s Franz Valente (drums) — is a transatlantic supergroup that specializes in heavy music that’s been described as beautiful, merciless and unforgiving. 

Creatively, the band has always been led by instinct and the id-like impulse to expressed completely unfiltered and unvarnished emotion through song. And through their close musical alliance, they’ve displayed a seemingly innate ability to craft material that warps and buckles with complexity, freedom, tenderness and primeval energy — simultaneously. 

“BUÑUEL is a name that embodies a certain cultural and literary reference, which evokes an entire world,” the band’s Franz Valente says. “Like his films, our Buñuel is surrealism. We take the listeners into a place that’s suspended between dream and reality.” Eugene S. Robinson adds “What we’re doing with BUÑUEL is to carve out a very specific glimpse… partly into hearts of darkness, but more specifically into the depth of our secrets. Secrets we keep from each other, ourselves and whatever futures we’ve imagined for ourselves. We are ultimately trying to communicate something direct and deadly about the human condition.”

The transatlantic supergroup’s latest album, 2024’s Timo Ellis-produced Mansuetude derived its title from an archaic word which means “meekness” or “gentleness.” For a band known for being punishingly heavy, the title is an ironic juxtaposition. Firmly anchored in their long-held penchant for surrealism, the album saw the band taking every possible opportunity toad stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort and deconstruction of tradition, while pushing towards absolute abandon.

Sonically, the album’s material encompassed many moods — sometimes simultaneously — while blurring elements of post-hardcore, avant-noise, hard blues, post-industrial, symphonic thrash, metal and free-jazz. The record is, in Robinson’s words “extreme but articulate.” 

The album featured the previously released “Class,” “American Steel,” feat. The Jesus Lizard‘s Tomahawk‘s and The Denison Kimball Trio‘s Duane Denison, “A Killing on the Beach,” and its latest single, “High. Speed. Chase.”

“High. Speed. Chase.” is a bruising and breakneck, mosh pit inducing ripper, anchored around a furious and unhinged Robinson vocal turn, scorching riffage and thunderous drumming. At its core, the song expresses a mix of rage, confusion and ad desire to defy death — and in some way, it also makes the song the perfect soundtrack for the titular high speed chase.

Directed by Annapaola Martin, the accompanying video for “High. Speed. Chase.” is split between footage shot on the road with city skylines, highways and convenience stores race by through the windows, and footage of the band destroying stages with their incendiary live show.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kim Gordon Shares Woozy “NOT TODAY”

The legendary Kim Gordon will be releasing her third solo album, the Justin Raisen-produced PLAY ME on March 13, 2026 through Matador Records. PLAY ME is reportedly distilled and immediate, and sees Gordon expanding on her sonic palette to include more melodic beats and the motorik drive of krautock.

“We wanted the songs to be short,” Gordon says of her continued collaboration with acclaimed, Los Angeles-based producer Justin Raisen. “We wanted to do it really fast. It’s more focused, and maybe more confident. I always kind of work off of rhythms, and I knew I wanted it to be even more beat-oriented than the last one. Justin really gets my voice and my lyrics and he understands how I work—that came forth even more on this record.” 

PLAY ME is the follow-up to 2024’s critically applauded sophomore album The Collective, which featured the two-time Grammy-nominated single “BYE BYE.” PLAY ME sees Gordon processing in her imitable way, the collateral damage of the billionaire class: the demolition of democracy, technocratic end-times-like fascism, the A.I.-fueled chill vibes flattering of culture — where dark humor voices the absurdity of our moment. But despite its frequent outward gave, the album is essentially an interior effort, one in which heightened emotionality pulses through physical jams, while rejecting definitive statements in favor of an inquisitiveness and curiosity that keeps Gordon searching — and ever in process.

Amid PLAY ME’s rabbit-hole reality bricolage, pitch-shifted vocals and shadowy layers of dissonance, the album’s material are clear-eyed about the attention they pay to a world that would rather you be distracted and rage-baited into oblivion. “I have to say, the thing that influenced me most was the news. We are in some kind of ‘post empire’ now, where people just disappear,” Gordon says, echoing the title of one of PLAY ME’s tracks.

PLAY ME’s lead single “NOT TODAY” pairs Gordon’s imitable croon with woozily dreamy production anchored around a motorik-like groove, bursts of feedback-driven shoegazer guitar textures, glitchy electronics and driving beats. “I started singing in a way I hadn’t sung in a long time,” Gordon says. “This other voice came out.”

The accompanying video was directed by Rodarte fashion label founders and filmmakers Kate and Laura Mulleavy with director of photography Christopher Blauvelt. Throughout the video, Gordon wears a hand-dyed silk tulle dress from an early Rodarte collection, that was custom-made for her by the Mulleavys. “She was our idol and we vividly remember fitting the dress with her in NYC,” the Mulleavys said. “When we started to conceptualize the video, Kim brought up wearing the dress, which we knew was perfect for the video idea.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: METZ Reunite to Perform “A Boat to Drown In” on “Everybody’s Live with John Mullaney”

JOVM mainstays METZ reunite to perform “A Boat to Drown In” on “Everybody’s Live With John Mullaney.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Share a Tense and Uneasy Tale of Conflicted Emotions

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 last month 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 is arguably 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.” 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about three of the album’s previously released singles: 

  • “Disgust,” an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time. “‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air.  I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.” 

  • “Bad Idea,” a track anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat and woozily oscillating feedback-driven guitar lines. John Fedowitz’s plaintive yet punchy delivery weaves in and out of the stormy and soundscape, which helps to evoke the vacillating, almost nauseating unease of self-doubt. “Bad Idea” showcases the raw creativity of the band’s bassist John Fedowitz. “He came to the studio with a simple looping drum beat, thinking he didn’t have any good ideas — thus, this song was his ‘bad idea,’” the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann says. “We each penned some lines on paper, and he sang the ones that resonated. After a few instrumental passes, the recording was complete. The result is an innovative track born from spontaneous collaboration and a touch of self-doubt, turned into something uniquely captivating.” 

  • “Fear Of Transformation,” 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.

Synthesizer’s fifth single “Don’t Be Sorry,” is a brooding and tense tale of complicated and conflicted emotions, the hate, longing, heartache, betrayal and frustration that frequently comes from your nearest and dearest, and from those you’re estranged from through the use of angular and woozy surf rock guitars, bursts of abrasive synth noise paired with a chugging, motorik groove.

“This song is about how nothing in life is black and white. You sometimes feel hurt and hatred from certain people and yet somehow still miss them,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann explains. “Also, as time goes on there are always connections lost with family and friends.  You really want them back in your life but can’t always make it work. Anxiety builds with regret.  You continually miss chances to reach out and see them and then there just isn’t any time left. 

“I feel guilt and worry, wondering what they must think;  if it’s just me who feels this lost connection or if the feeling is mutual. Whatever it is, I would like for these people to know that I miss them and would greet them with open arms if it’s ever possible to reconvene.

“The ‘Synthesizer’ was used to create the abrasive crash sounds that drive home the forcefulness of the chorus ‘Return Home, Don’t Be Sorry’, contrasting with the intimate and concerned vocal delivery.

Directed by Sweden’s Johannes Nyholm, director of the modern cult horror masterpiece Koko-di Koka-da, the horror-themed video depicts a love triangle and power struggle between life, death and art, that stars the Master, the Minion and the Wife that features a fix of animation and live action, shot in a gorgeous black and white.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: BUÑUEL Shares a Furiously Primal Ripper

BUÑUEL — OXBOW‘s Eugene S. Robinson, Afterhours and A Short Apnea‘s Xabier Iriondo (guitar), The Framers‘ Andrea Lombardini (bass) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori’s Franz Valente (drums) — is a transatlantic supergroup that specializes in heavy music that’s been described as beautiful, merciless and unforgiving. 

Creatively, the band has always been led by instinct and the id-like impulse to expressed completely unfiltered and unvarnished emotion through song. And through their close musical alliance, they’ve displayed a seemingly innate ability to craft material that warps and buckles with complexity, freedom, tenderness and primeval energy — simultaneously. 

“BUÑUEL is a name that embodies a certain cultural and literary reference, which evokes an entire world,” the band’s Franz Valente says. “Like his films, our Buñuel is surrealism. We take the listeners into a place that’s suspended between dream and reality.” Eugene S. Robinson adds “What we’re doing with BUÑUEL is to carve out a very specific glimpse… partly into hearts of darkness, but more specifically into the depth of our secrets. Secrets we keep from each other, ourselves and whatever futures we’ve imagined for ourselves. We are ultimately trying to communicate something direct and deadly about the human condition.”

Slated for an October 25, 2024 release through SKiN Graft Records and OVERDRIVE Records, the transatlantic supergroup’s latest album, the Timo Ellis-produced Mansuetude derives its title from an archaic word, which means “meekness’ or “gentleness.” Certainly, for a band known for being punishingly heavy, the title seems like an ironic juxtaposition. Firmly anchored in the band’s long-held penchant for surrealism, the album reportedly sees the band taking every opportunity they can to stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort and the deconstruction of tradition, all while reaching absolute abandon. Sonically, the album’s material encompasses many moods — sometimes simultaneously — while blurring elements of post-hardcore, avant-noise, hard blues, post-industrial, symphonic thrash, metal and free-jazz, played at great cost. The record is, in Robinson’s words “extreme but articulate.” 

The album also features guest spots from Converge‘s Jacob Bannon (vocals), The Jesus Lizard‘s Tomahawk‘s and The Denison Kimball Trio‘s Duane Denison (guitar), Andrea Beninati (cello) and David Binney(alto sax, vocals). 

Earlier this month, I wrote about “Class,” an urgent, amygdala-driven teeth-bared, id-fueled ripper built around Robinson’s primal shouts and howls, thunderous drumming and scorching riffage. Seemingly featuring elements of heavy metal, No Wave, thrash punk and noise rock, “Class” sonically seems like a forceful synthesis of Boris, Bo Ningen, The Stooges and several others while being deliriously artful. But underpinning it all, the song is rooted in incisive socioeconomic criticism that’s furious yet very funny. “America is schizophrenic about class and class attributes,” BUÑUEL’s Robinson explains. “On the one hand we claim it doesn’t exist here, on the other hand like Paul Fussell lays out in his book on class it works its way through every aspect of American life and living. The song itself eviscerates the notion by placing it where it most needs to be placed: in the iD fuelled [sic] underworld.”

Mansuetude‘s latest single “American Steel” features The Jesus Lizard’s, Tomahawk’s and the Denison Kimball Trio’s Duane Denison continues a run of unhinged, amygdala-driven, id-fueled rippers anchored around Robinson’s primal shouts and howls, thunderous drumming and scorching riffage. Sounding much like a man, who has gone absolutely mad, “American Steel” captures a certain kind of power madness with the song pays tribute to something particularly American: our love of big bore hemis, assault weapons, tanks, violence and Harleys.

Duane Denison says. “Eugene Robinson’s vocals have the effect of listening to a desperately flailing drowning man, and my guitar serves as a malfunctioning floatation device–it never quite makes it long enough to provide actual safety.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: BUÑUEL Shares a Primal and Incisive Ripper

BUÑUEL — OXBOW‘s Eugene S. Robinson, Afterhours and A Short Apnea‘s Xabier Iriondo (guitar), The Framers‘ Andrea Lombardini (bass) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori’s Franz Valente (drums) — is a transatlantic supergroup that specializes in heavy music that’s been described as beautiful, merciless and unforgiving.

Creatively, the band has always been led by instinct and the id-like impulse to expressed completely unfiltered and unvarnished emotion through song. And through their close musical alliance, they’ve displayed a seemingly innate ability to craft material that warps and buckles with complexity, freedom, tenderness and primeval energy — simultaneously.

“BUÑUEL is a name that embodies a certain cultural and literary reference, which evokes an entire world,” the band’s Franz Valente says. “Like his films, our Buñuel is surrealism. We take the listeners into a place that’s suspended between dream and reality.” Eugene S. Robinson adds “What we’re doing with BUÑUEL is to carve out a very specific glimpse… partly into hearts of darkness, but more specifically into the depth of our secrets. Secrets we keep from each other, ourselves and whatever futures we’ve imagined for ourselves. We are ultimately trying to communicate something direct and deadly about the human condition.”

Slated for an October 25, 2024 release through SKiN Graft Records and OVERDRIVE Records, the transatlantic supergroup’s latest album, the Timo Ellis-produced Mansuetude derives its title from an archaic word, which means “meekness’ or “gentleness.” Certainly, for a band known for being punishingly heavy, the title probably seems like an ironic juxtaposition. Firmly anchored in the band’s long-held penchant for surrealism, the album reportedly sees the band taking every opportunity they can to stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort and the deconstruction of tradition, all while reaching absolute abandon. Sonically, the album’s material encompasses many moods — sometimes simultaneously — while blurring elements of post-hardcore, avant-noise, hard blues, post-industrial, symphonic thrash, metal and free-jazz, played at great cost. The record is, in Robinson’s words “extreme but articulate.”

The album also features guest spots from Converge‘s Jacob Bannon (vocals), The Jesus Lizard‘s Tomahawk‘s and The Denison Kimball Trio‘s Duane Denison (guitar), Andrea Beninati (cello) and David Binney (alto sax, vocals).

“Class” Mansuetude‘s latest single is an urgent, amygdala-driven teeth-bared, id-fueled ripper built around Robinson’s primal shouts and howls, thunderous drumming and scorching riffage. Seemingly featuring elements of heavy metal, No Wave, thrash punk and noise rock, “Class” sonically seems like a forceful synthesis of Boris, Bo Ningen, The Stooges and several others while being deliriously artful. But underpinning it all, the song is rooted in incisive socioeconomic criticism that’s furious yet very funny.

“America is schizophrenic about class and class attributes,” BUÑUEL’s Robinson explains. “On the one hand we claim it doesn’t exist here, on the other hand like Paul Fussell lays out in his book on class it works its way through every aspect of American life and living. The song itself eviscerates the notion by placing it where it most needs to be placed: in the iD fuelled [sic] underworld.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Shares Pulsating Synth Punk Ripper “Fear Of Transformation”

New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing their seventh album Synthesizer on October 4, 2024 (digital) and October 25, 2024 (vinyl) 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. 

Reportedly, Synthesizer is arguably 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.” 

In the lead-up to the album’s digital release on Friday, I’ve written about two of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “Disgust,” an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time. “‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air.  I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.” 

  • “Bad Idea,” a track anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat and woozily oscillating feedback-driven guitar lines. John Fedowitz’s plaintive yet punchy delivery weaves in and out of the stormy and soundscape, which helps to evoke the vacillating, almost nauseating unease of self-doubt. “Bad Idea” showcases the raw creativity of the band’s bassist John Fedowitz. “He came to the studio with a simple looping drum beat, thinking he didn’t have any good ideas — thus, this song was his ‘bad idea,’” the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann says. “We each penned some lines on paper, and he sang the ones that resonated. After a few instrumental passes, the recording was complete. The result is an innovative track born from spontaneous collaboration and a touch of self-doubt, turned into something uniquely captivating.” 

Synthesizer‘s latest 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.

Created and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle, the accompanying video for “Fear Of Transformation” follows a teenage boy, who sneaks out from his parents’ house to go to his first furry party — but he has a deep secret: he’s a werewolf. And he winds up going on a bloody rampage.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place To Bury Strangers Share Woozy “Bad Idea”

New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing their seventh album Synthesizer on October 4, 2024 through Dedstrange records. 

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. 

Reportedly, Synthesizer is arguably 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.” 

Earlier this year, I wrote about album single “Disgust,” a classic bit of APTBS. Or in other words, an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time.

“‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air.  I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.” 

Synthesizer‘s latest single “Bad Idea” is anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat, woozily oscillating feedback-driven guitar lines. John Fedowitz’s plaintive yet punchy delivery weaves in and out of the stormy and soundscape, which helps to evoke the vacillating, almost nauseating unease of self-doubt.

“Bad Idea” showcases the raw creativity of the band’s bassist John Fedowitz. “He came to the studio with a simple looping drum beat, thinking he didn’t have any good ideas — thus, this song was his ‘bad idea,'” the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann says. “We each penned some lines on paper, and he sang the ones that resonated. After a few instrumental passes, the recording was complete. The result is an innovative track born from spontaneous collaboration and a touch of self-doubt, turned into something uniquely captivating.”

Shot and edited by Nick Kulp with additional filming by Mathilde Cartoux, the accompanying video for “Bad Idea” was shot during various live performances by the band between 2023-2024 on a Sony Hi8 video camera, and was edited through various analog glitch processors.

women who kick ass by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: Elsewhere Music Festival: Day 1: 6/21/24 feat. Killer Mike, A Place to Bury Strangers, Snow Tha Product, TOKiMONSTA, D. Smoke and Zuzu’s Petals

Live concert photography from Elsewhere Festival’s first day feat, Killer Mike, Snow Tha Product, A Place to Bury Strangers, TOKiMonsta, D. Smoke and Zuzu’s Petals.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Led by Death by Audio founder and Dedstrange Records co-founder Oliver Ackermann, New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place To Bury Strangers — currently Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (guitar) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — have long been fueled by Ackermann’s restless creativity and propensity to be surprising: Over the past close to two decades, A Place To Bury Strangers have delighted, astonished — and occasionally destroyed the eardrums of — their audience with a sound that combines elements of post-punk, noise rock, shoegaze, psychedelia and avant-garde music in rather unexpected ways. Their live show is often wildly unpredictable and often sees the band creating a  a shamanistic experience that bathes listeners in glorious sound, crazed left turns, transcendent vibrations, real-time experiments, brilliant breakthroughs.

And as the founder of Death By Audio, the company behind signal-scrambling stomp boxes and visionary instrument effect pedals, Ackerman has exported that sense of excitement, surprise and invention to other artists, who plug their instruments into his company’s gear and attempt to blow minds with wild, new sounds and approaches. 

With A Place To Bury Strangers’ latest lineup, the band may arguably be at their most courageous and accessibly melodic in their lengthy and acclaimed run. The new lineup has two releases under their belt, 2021’s Hologram EP and their sixth full-length album, 2022’s critically applauded See Through You, which they’ve supported with a seemingly indefatigable touring schedule. 

Continuing their long-held reputation for restless creativity, the members of APTBS are releasing a four 7-inch vinyl record series, called The Sevens. The Sevens are a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks from See Through You. The special vinyl collection sees the band inviting listeners to dive deeper into their unique sonic universe to explore uncharted territories and hidden gems. “When looking back at the recordings that were done around the time of See Through You, there were a bunch of great tracks that just captured life back then and really had something incredible going on,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann says. “Even though they are a bit raw and a bit personal, I thought it would be a mistake if they didn’t come out. I thought it would be best to go back to my roots and put out a series of 7-inches the way A Place To Bury Strangers started. That strange weird format where the tracks each speak for themselves; no album context to muddy the water. These tracks are such a contrast to the way I am feeling now and the current songs we’ve been working on so slip back into this moment in time.”

Earlier this year, APTBS released the first installment of the series “It Is Time”/”Change Your God,” which featured “Change Your God,” a bit classic APTBS — a bombastic, over-the-top punk and shoegaze sonic explosion rooted in fuzz and feedback saturated power chords, pummeling drumming and propulsive bass lines paired with Ackerman’s reverb-drenched, seemingly detached yet yearning delivery within a grunge-like quieter, extremely loud-quieter song structures.

“The latest installment of the series “I Can Never Be As Great As You”/”Chasing Colors” pairs a relentless motorik-like groove with Ackerman’s punchy delivery and wailing bursts of explosive feedback. Much like APTBS’ growing catalog, “I Can Never Be As Great As You” pairs a relentless motorik-like groove with Ackerman’s punchy delivery and wailing bursts of explosive feedback. Much like APTBS’ growing catalog, “I Can Never Be As Great As You” is meant to be played eardrum shatteringly loud and enjoyed in a sweaty mosh pit.

The longtime JOVM mainstays are currently in touring Europe to support their singles series. They’ll be on a short Stateside tour that includes a May 31, 2024 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the tour dates below.


 
The Sevens European Union Tour Dates:

Tue. Apr. 9 – Milan, IT @ ARCI Bellezza &
Wed. Apr. 10 – Bologna, IT @ Coco Club &
Thu. Apr. 11 – Rome, IT @ Monk &
Fri. Apr. 12 – Palermo, IT @ Candelai *
Sat. Apr. 13 – Messina, IT @ Retronouveau †
Mon. Apr. 15 – Zurich CH @ Bogen F &
Tue. Apr. 16 – Bern, DH @ ISC Club *
Wed. Apr. 17 – Marseille, FR @ La Make &
Thu. Apr. 18 – Toulouse, FR @ Le Rex &
Fri. Apr. 19 – Barcelona, ES @ Barcelona Psych Fest [The Sevens Release Show]
Sat. Apr. 20 – Madrid, ES @ El Sol *&
Sun. Apr. 21 – San Sebastián, ES @ Dabadaba &
Tue. Apr. 23 – Paris, FR @ Petit Bain ^
Wed. Apr. 24 – Lille, FR @ Le Grand Mix ^
Thu. Apr. 25 – Maastricht, NL @ Muziekgieterij ^


The Sevens US Release Shows:

May 29 – Providence, RI – Alchemy w/ Pons & Ski Club

May 30 – Boston, MA – Crystal Ballroom ^

May 31 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg ^

June 1 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts ^

^ With JJUUJJUU & SUUNS


 
* With Ceremony East Coast
& With Maquina (PT)
^ With Plattenbau (DE)
† With Patriarchy (US)
$ With ERRORR (DE)

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Italian Punks The Gluts Share Explosive and Breakneck “Cade Giù”

Milan-based punk rock outfit The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from an age-old term often used to denote unsold, surplus goods. For the Milanese outfit, they’ve taken the term to symbolically express a surplus of energy, much like the energy that has long driven their work.

Since their formation, they’ve released three 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip which have seen the band establish and hone an explosive, psychedelic-tinged take on noise punk and thrash punk. 2021’s Bob de Wit-produced Ungrateful Heart saw the band making a decided sonic departure from their previously released work: The album’s material was deeply inspired by and indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsession with Italian and American

Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts said in press notes. 

The band’s highly-anticipated fifth album Bang! is slated for a May 31, 2024 release through Fuzz Club. The album’s material sees the band balancing between punchy, breakneck punk and noisy experimentalism, while accurately capturing a distilled sense of the fierce energy and power of their notoriously wild, noisy live shows, which they’ve taken internationally across the international festival circuit with stops at New Colossus Festival, The Great Escape, Eurosonic and others, as well as shows across Europe, South Africa and the States.

Clocking in at a little over two minutes, Bang!‘s first single “Cade Giù”is a searing and punchy blast of psych punk power chord-fueled feedback, thunderous drumming and howled vocals — in Italian. While sonically channeling JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers, as well as Dion Lunadon, My Bloody Valentine and others, “Cade Giù” is the first song that the band has ever written, sung and recorded in their native Italian. The song, as the band explains speaks about the blurry reminiscences of a typical after-show party while on tour, and focuses on a particularly wild night with their friend and booking agent. You can picture the friends heading from bar to bar to bar, the copious beers, shots, gin and tonics, acting like drunken louts through town — and the vertigo-like disorientation of being fucked up out of your mind. But goddamn it, you’re having the time of your life!

Edited by Dario Bassi Bruno the video features footage from several different copyright-free, B movies including Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead’s 1951 film Trance and Dance, Jean Rollin’s 1979 film Fascination, Jack Arnold’s 1954 film The Creature from the Black Lagoon, George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, Abel Ferrera’s 1979 film The Driller Killer and Pavel Klushantsev’s and Peter Bogdanovic’s 1968 film Voyage to the Planet of Prehistory Women.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place To Bury Strangers Share an Explosive Ripper

Led by Death by Audio founder and Dedstrange Records co-founder Oliver Ackermann, New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place To Bury Strangers — currently Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (guitar) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — have long been fueled by Ackermann’s restless creativity and propensity to be surprising: Over the past close to two decades, A Place To Bury Strangers have delighted, astonished — and occasionally destroyed the eardrums of — their audience with a sound that combines elements of post-punk, noise rock, shoegaze, psychedelia and avant-garde music in rather unexpected ways. Their live show is often wildly unpredictable and often sees the band

In concert, A Place To Bury Strangers is nothing short of astounding — a shamanistic experience that bathes listeners in glorious sound, crazed left turns, transcendent vibrations, real-time experiments, brilliant breakthroughs.

And as the founder of Death By Audio, the company behind signal-scrambling stomp boxes and visionary instrument effect pedals, Ackerman has exported that sense of excitement, surprise and invention to other artists, who plug their instruments into his company’s gear and attempt to blow minds with wild, new sounds and approaches.

With A Place To Bury Strangers’ latest lineup, the band may arguably be at their most current sounding, courageous and accessible melodic in their lengthy and acclaimed run. The new lineup has two releases under their belt, 2021’s Hologram EP and their sixth full-length album, 2022’s critically applauded See Through You, which they’ve supported with a seemingly indefatigable touring schedule.

Continuing their long-held reputation for restless creativity, the members of APTBS are releasing a four 7-inch vinyl record series, called The Sevens. The Sevens are a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks from See Through You. The special vinyl collection sees the band inviting listeners to dive deeper into their unique sonic universe to explore uncharted territories and hidden gems. “When looking back at the recordings that were done around the time of See Through You, there were a bunch of great tracks that just captured life back then and really had something incredible going on,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann says. “Even though they are a bit raw and a bit personal, I thought it would be a mistake if they didn’t come out. I thought it would be best to go back to my roots and put out a series of 7-inches the way A Place To Bury Strangers started. That strange weird format where the tracks each speak for themselves; no album context to muddy the water. These tracks are such a contrast to the way I am feeling now and the current songs we’ve been working on so slip back into this moment in time.”

The first installment of the series, “It Is Time”/”Change Your God” saw its digital release the other day and will see a physical release on Friday. “Change Your God,” the first single of the series is classic APTBS — bombastic, over-the-top post-punk and shoegaze sonic explosion rooted in fuzz and feedback saturated power chords, pummeling drumming and propulsive bass lines, grunge-like quieter-extremely loud-quieter song structures and Ackermann’s reverb-drenched, seemingly detached yet yearning delivery.

The accomapnying video features slickly edited stock footage of pulsating time-lapsed highway traffic and blooming flowers, of sledgehammers smashing things, jellyfish glowing in the dark, buildings imploding and more. And it’s all fucking awesome.