A Place To Bury Strangers // Worship

A Place To Bury Strangers
Worship
(Dead Oceans)
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DIY bands are usually great. We say 'usually' because in this digital age, every band not only has a profile online, but makes their own videos, records their own records, fakes their own names to become their own management and then hacks into your email to tell you all about it. And it's only then that you realise, that DIY can also mean 'dangerous psychopaths'.

Still, when the going gets tough the genuinely innovative up their game. Artrocker's been a fan of New York's premier noise-rock trio A Place To Bury Strangers for some time, and it was intriguing to hear that for their third album, they built their own tools. What? What can this mean? They built their own TOOLS?

This would appear to be the case: 'Worship' doesn't quite sound like any other album around out there, its fuzz is white hot and pure, its drums pierce and cut through the mix, its distortion sounds like an unholy baboon wretching up its own head from the inside out. This is the work of people who know their sheet - and possibly built their sheet too.

Yet enough of this mumbo jumbo! Because nobody wins nothing around here without the tunes to finish the job, and boy does 'Worship' deliver: 'Alone' is an electro night ride with some freaky glam rock alien at the steering wheel, 'Mind Control' kicks shoe gaze in its fat ass and beckons it come outside for a run in the neon rain, while 'Dissolved' offers a reverb drenched winter wonderland of bliss before splitting into what sounds suspiciously like a Cure classic. Tasty!

Nu-gaze bands are breeding like hamsters at the moment, but every time AP2BS reappear it's like they're shoeing away the pretenders. True to form 'Worship' is a masterclass in music as location placement, blending dark urban romanticism, Terminator-esque '80s ultraviolence and speed beats to land you squarely in the dystopian district at quarter to midnight. Step on the gas mother*cker!