A Place to Bury Strangers, 'Exploding Head' (Mute)
Auteurs of distortion refurbish noisy void.
By David Bevan 10.06.09 1:12 PM
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.
Tell me why you gave it only 3 and 1/2 stars. All you did was write a paragraph about what it sounds similar to and not what you disliked about it enough to give it only 3 1/2 stars.
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