With their third full length album, members of A Place to Bury Strangers continue to show their complete lack of compassion for the human eardrum. They’ve once again mangled together custom, self-made Death By Audio distortion tones with reverbed-out drums and desolate vocals into something different. Aesthetically, it should remind you faintly of that ceramic cat you broke at your grandmother’s house seven years ago. You tried to tape it back together when everyone else was sleeping, but you knew it looked nothing a cat once you were done. Of course the new APTBS album is noisey noise rock and psychy psych, but as I say that, I have some reservations. My beef with APTBS’ music has typically been how oddly distant and monotonous each song feels. It’s definitely an odd point to insist about a noise rock band with industrial psych influences, but most APTBS releases leave me a bit behind, wondering why Oliver Ackermann has spent countless hours finding just the right tone for your-house-is-burning-and-collapsing-on-your-dog-while-someone-holds-a-jackhammer-to-your-forehead. My question felt much less ignored on this album than on the previous two. Worship has several songs that diverge from APTBS’ average library: the slow jam, “Dissolved” (6), and the more surfy “And I’m Up”(9) ring out as a more introspective and warm use of the wall-of-sound aesthetic. That being said, all the songs on this album are great. Nothing about Worship suggests a significant stray from bludgeoning devoted fans in the temple.
