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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Place to Bury Strangers = The Jesus & Mary Chain + Joy Division + The Cure's first four albums + Bauhaus's In the Flat Field, April 3, 2008
To all the babies who pine for the Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine to reunite, I have one thing to say: move on. How can you whine when terrific artists such as Autolux, Liars and Voyager One exist? Now A Place to Bury Strangers, one of the purer, more nostalgic shoegaze outfits, competently picks up the discarded fuzzy, spaced-out, heavy pieces shattered by your heroes. The band cover its already gritty tinny-to-shrieking guitars, picked bass, post-punk-rhythm-spewing drum machines and reverb-soaked vocals with even more grit, volume (!) and otherwise raw production. The harmonies and solos are frugal yet meaningful, and the lyrics mysterious and hard to hear: in other words, it's the ultimate homage to the aforementioned legends. Unoriginality is rarely a pleasant compliment, but only because it never sounded this perfect!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
highly appropriate, September 20, 2008
This band has everything. Well-written tunes that are, at the same time, a perfect mix of noisy brutality and atmospheric catchiness.
As other reviewers, blogs, and hype-sters have penned: this band is a perfectly assembled mix of The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order. Of course, there are other influences at work: My Bloody Valentine (and other shoegaze bands) and Nine Inch Nails (and other industrial bands).
It is great that this band has been opening for the aforementioned industrial band: they are a great mix of many styles that are not for weak, Juno/Garden State-ears. Despite the facts that the folks at Pitchfork hype them up, they are not the Shins or the Hold Steady (bands that I enjoy in their own light). This is loud, abrasive, and negative music.
That said, if you like JAMC, the shoegaze bands, or other various industrial type bands, you will love them. Great song-writing, melodies, and lyrics will hook you immediately like a largemouth bass. Sweet.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This One Goes to Eleven, May 8, 2008
"I'll just wait until you turn around / kick your face in!" That lyric from this band's visceral track "To Fix the Gash in Your Head" pretty much sums up the sonic intentions of A Place To Bury Strangers. On their debut LP, they deliver ten sharp kicks to the cranium in static-laden doses of ear-shattering distortion, pulsing drum machine beats, and reverb-saturated baritone vocals. While they are certainly indebted to the shoegazers of yore (My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Catherine Wheel), their treble-soaked clatter and ominous, sometimes downright malevolent lyrics are equally informed by the goth-dance of New Order and Joy Division and the mechanized doom of late '80s industrial. Still, I've never heard an indie rock band indulge in the shrill high-end extremes of guitar hiss quite as liberally as these guys. Upon the first listen, it almost seems too much, as if they forgot to smooth out those nasty squealing overtones before they released this thing. But it doesn't take long to realize that these brittle, unnerving sonic qualities are the defining characteristics that give these songs their power and beauty. But hey - let's not over-analyze it any further. Let's just crank it up and forget our ear plugs!
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is A Place to Bury Strangers' 
