A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – Change Your God / It is Time

For those who’ve followed the musical progress of New York shoegazers A Place To Bury Strangers since their early days, the band’s gradual, and very natural shift into more commercial sounds has likely formed a very interesting journey. For those who discovered the band a little later, these “commercial sounds” could still feel cold and confronting, but somewhere beneath their distortion and darkness, it should’ve become increasing clear that these Jesus & Mary Chain obsessives were capable of wielding a great tune.

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A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – Hologram EP

Following the release of the live ‘Fuzz Club Session’, things seemed to go a little quiet for A Place To Bury Strangers, at least in terms of press coverage, but the band carried on making underground sounds. The self-released ‘Ice Cream’ 7” continued their onslaught on the shoegaze scene, and even a drastic line-up change at the beginning of 2021 couldn’t suppress their commitment to being “New York’s loudest band”.

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A Place To Bury Strangers return with new single and video

It’s been three years since A Place To Bury Strangers released new studio material, but everyone’s favourite New York noisemakers return in July with a brand new EP release, ‘Hologram’.

As part of the early promotion for their long overdue return, they’ve shared the lead single ‘End of The Night’, along with an accompanying video.

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A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – Fuzz Club Session

Once claimed to be “the loudest band in New York”, noise rockers A Place To Bury Strangers have carved out a true cult following since forming in 2002. By creating a sound that fused heavy distortion with gothic and shoegaze tendencies, their first two albums laid down some wantonly dense retro sounds, while their later releases somehow managed to feel a little more accessible without losing too many of the band’s most confrontational elements.

Their 2019 release ‘The Fuzz Club Session’ was recorded in a single day when APTBS visited Love Buzz Studios in South London at the end of a tour. According to frontman Oliver Ackermann, there are times where it’s possible for a band to feel tired of their own material after being on the road, so a little re-invention is needed to keep things interesting. That’s very much where this release comes in.

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NO JOY – Drool Sucker EP

drool-epCombining elements of shoegaze, dreampop, drone and a touch of post-hardcore noise, Montreal’s No Joy have carved out a career as part of the alternative underground, making music that can be both darkly captivating and brutal, yet retain some kind of mystic beauty within that general dystopia. Previous full length releases have featured a broad range of retro sounds and huge echoes of an alt-rock past. From the 90s throwback loveliness of tracks like ‘Wrack Attack’ and the pure dream pop of ‘Moon In My Mouth’, to the Jesus and Mary Chain ugliness of ‘Still’, there’s very little to link the tracks with being the same band, yet at the same time, their unsettling qualities suggest they’re all the product of No Joy. Each record is home to buried treasure – it can be laborious to find that gold, but rest assured it’s there.

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