Worship

Working in a black and gray palette of volume overkill and distortion, A Place to Bury Strangers could hardly have chosen a more restrictive milieu. Once you’ve shown you can sustain rhythms that threaten to dissolve under layers of corrosive murk or carve something like a pop melody out of a swirling abyss, what’s left? This Brooklyn band isn’t afraid to find out. On <i>Worship</i>, it borrows the taut early post-punk of Wire’s more experimental side, along with the cavernous, rhythmic grooves of Joy Division. It hones the edges of staccato bass lines and spark-throwing guitar noise until everything burns bright white. The heat generated by the friction on tunes like “Revenge” and “Leaving Tomorrow” is as blinding as it is deafening, while the gleaming “You Are the One” moves in a silvery streak before it melts into a puddle of steaming black ooze. The industrial gray of the first half of “Dissolved” suddenly turns pink, as the last two minutes bubble—surprisingly—with fantastically airy, glittering guitar. The willingness of APTBS to be bold and daring while staying inside the boundaries of its chosen sound garden is a beautiful thing indeed.