A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
Wilde Westen Club Kortrijk, Belgium
11 February 2023
Album artwork – new LP ‘SEE TROUGH YOU’
Last year when Brooklyn’s notorious noiseniks A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
unleashed their 6th album See Trough You, Turn Up The Volume wrote: “What
does it sound like? Remember Ozzy Osbourne telling his mates about movies that
scare people and his idea of making music that scares people. That’s exactly what
A Place To Bury Strangers do. Their gloom and doom force is intimidating.”
Last Saturday, when they hit Belgium with scary big bangs and my head was rotating
in several directions I remembered that quote and the thought came up that APTBS
would kick Black Sabbath‘s asses any day of the week, easily. Fact!
Dragged In A Hole – a stunning show highlight
Only one song in and mastermind-guitarist-vocalist Oliver Ackermann had molested
his guitar and needed another one to continue the thunder and stroboscope lighting spectacle. His 6-string chainsaw and his demonic howling accentuate the exorcistic
My Bloody Valentine feel of this extravagant hallucinatory ceremony. Insanity in motion.
An APTBS show is a physical and psychological experience. Physical, because
your body really feels the gargantuan noise going through you and psychological
because your mind gets clobbered, messed up, turned upside down and inside out,
when confronted with such an exceptional event as this.
And the moment I thought I got lost in psych space, the trio moved into the center
of the club and continued shoulder-to-shoulder with the crowd for about an earthshaking quarter. A glorious intimate happening while they kept on bashing and trashing in the free world.
A special word for new drummer Sandra Fedowitz. She’s a non-stop, mean hammering machine. Her gusto, her grinta, her fervency are just off the charts. Along with the also relatively new bassist John Fedowitz she keeps the band’s hyperkinetic heart beating in overdrive for the full 60 minutes. Ecstatic pandemonium with tons of illegal decibels.
The finale truly was hair-rising and breathtaking with Sandra up front, battering her drum while she send shivers down our spines with her primal screams having a louder-than-war contest with Ackerman‘s apocalyptic guitar terror. A Place To Bury Strangers have supernatural NOIZZZ powers to wake up the dead. Hallelujah!
Yes, louder-than-war, is what APTBS is about. I’m sure if these Brooklyn sonic chaos addicts would play the Kremlin for only 10 minutes they would blow Putin‘s fucking brains out. That would be their biggest war triumph ever.
Here’s a LOUD and CLEAR idea of APTBS’s life
Setlist.
1. Disgust
2. We’ve Come So Far
3. You Are the One
4. Dragged in a Hole
5. Ringing Bells
6. Freaks Unite
7. End of the Night
8. Hold On Tight
9. I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart
10. Have You Ever Been in Love
SEE TROUGH YOU
.
Not done yet.
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS: Facebook – Instagram
(All live pics by Turn Up The Volume)