Rock Euphoria

GLASGOW, UK – In the UK’s current musical climate of watered down indie pop getting most press attention, even in alternative circles, it’s refreshing to see a raw, aggressive act like A Place To Bury Strangers tour this side of the pond.  Being a fan of screeching, distorted rock guitar sounds, the fact that this trio were recently announced as being the ‘loudest’ band in NYC got my attention instantly and I had to go to this gig. I was told to take earplugs because I would need them. Curious…

I have their self titled debut album and in all honesty I haven’t been as excited about a CD release in a long time as I was when I first heard this. I am a big fan of The Jesus and Mary Chain & Joy Division and I feel APTBS’ signature sounds pays enough homage to these acts to mark them as major influences but shows an evolution into a more contemporary sound and style. It’s still just as driving, dark, uncomfortable and aggressive.

When we arrived at Sleazy’s the support band were on so we sent one of our party downstairs to check them out. He came back shaking his head so we had a beer at the upstairs bar and relaxed instead. This helped in increasing my excitement to see the band and I couldn’t wait the 40 minutes until they came onstage. To this day I have no idea who the support band was.

We got downstairs just in time to see them wave as they took to the stage in the skinniest jeans I have ever seen. I was ridiculously excited. As they opened with “Missing You” my euphoric mood was soon deflated.  No vocals could be heard! The guitar was too high in the mix drowning out those throbbing basslines and distorting the melodic parts to almost beyond recognition. Did they not do soundcheck, or was the soundman drunk?

The audience was getting really impatient as the band, oblivious to the problems, launched into “To Fix The Gash In Your Head” still with no vocals and a way too distorted sound, even for this type of music. Shouts of ‘vocals!, vocals!’ rang out and finally vocalist Oliver Ackermann stopped and sorted it with the sound engineer, taking about 10 minutes to do so.  Unfortunately, as those are  arguably the two most popular APTBS songs, I was bitterly disappointed and found it difficult to enjoy the rest of the gig. The band played very well, but it was obvious that the problems had deflated them. They clawed back up towards the end of the set with the amazing “Breathe” but the feeling of what had happened hung heavy in the air for me and a lot of the people around.

To add insult to injury they only played for 30 minutes. I understand they don’t have a lot of material, but I had hoped for a bit longer and some new songs. After the sound problems, I left feeling very underwhelmed. I didn’t even need to use my earplugs.

Would I go see them again? Hell yes!! Perhaps after a new album though.