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Reviews

A Place to Bury Strangers, ‘Exploding Head’ (Mute)

Led by effects-pedal guru Oliver Ackermann (the Edge is a customer), this Brooklyn trio further their rep for insane volume on their first proper studio album. “I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadows of Your Heart” is straight-to-the-head industrial rock, bull-rushing into a two-minute coda of pure squall and feedback that’s not unlike having hot club soda poured in your ears. But the noise never eclipses the songwriting — “Keep Slipping Away” is as tightly wound, shadowy, and sugary as any Cure single in decades.