A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS - Rare And Deadly

Ten years of experiments, some aborted prematurely, others guiltily left shut away in a drawer or elevated to the obscure status of B-side: material that now finds a common roof to shelter under, within a chapter that confirms Oliver Ackermann's role as absolutely central to the evolution of white noise and sonic layering in the new millennium.

With "Rare And Deadly", A Place To Bury Strangers compile an anthology of distortion, a compendium of what happens when post-punk decides to smash at two hundred miles an hour into a wall of valve amplifiers. The attention to atmosphere is obsessive: it has to be leaden, dark, full of cramped, saturated spaces shaped according to an aesthetic of controlled chaos; "places to bury strangers" that have spent years regenerating through a process of regular destruction and reassembly. Incandescent sonic matter, then, that conjures the ghosts of Jesus and Mary Chain, but after they've been given electroshock treatment.

Ackermann's guitars seem to buckle under the weight of the homemade pedals marketed through his own company, Death By Audio, effects capable of turning the electrical signal into pure abstract expressionism, somewhere between cosmic reverb and urban claustrophobia.

Melody tries to peek out through the rubble (emerging clearly on "Where Are We Now"), reminding us that APTBS do possess a pop soul, however deeply it may be buried under tons of industrial debris. The rhythm section dictates tight, almost dance-like tempos, but always in the most macabre and "dark" sense of the term, heightened by the classic shoegaze contrast: the caress that conceals a razor. The reverbed, distant vocal, as if muffled from the next room, acts as emotional glue amid a constant swirl of feedback, with volume becoming a weapon of cultural resistance, of intellectual intransigence, an entirely personal way of seeking the device capable of fusing melody with the most brutal of sonic assaults.

So why were these songs never released before? The answer lies in the very nature of Oliver Ackermann, an artist who lives in a constant state of "creative chaos". "Rare And Deadly" is certainly no belated commercial exercise, but rather a considered recovery of ten years of sonic (mis)adventures (2015-2025), finally unearthed.

Many of these tracks were born out of failed experiments or technical accidents - just listen to how "disturbed" a sonic delirium like the one in "Crash" can sound. Ackermann has often said that some pieces originated from pedals that were literally catching fire, or from ravaged magnetic tapes. Initially discarded as "too unstable" or unfinished, they've acquired a spectral fascination over the years. The period covered (the last decade) was marked by profound line-up changes: many songs were left in limbo as one version of the band dissolved and a new one slowly took shape, representing fragments of a shifting identity that found no place in the narrative of the official records.

Some tracks tackle emotionally heavy, painful themes: Ackermann has explained that he kept them to himself, because he felt they were too personal, until he decided the time had come to share them with the world. True to their anarchic spirit, APTBS have chosen to release these rarities in a unique way: each format (vinyl, CD, cassette, digital) features a different sequence - there is therefore no official tracklist for the album, a way of stating that this music was never meant to be "packaged", but to remain a fragmented, dangerous experience.

After a few years of aging, these tracks, thanks to some temporal distance, have taken on a fuller meaning, a way of being understood, so much so that in the end, rather than leftovers, they turned into the true backbone of APTBS's sound, containing some of the best songs the band has recorded in the last decade. One above all: "Song For Girl From Macedonia".

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23/04/2026