Transfixiation

With Transfixiation now becoming the band’s fourth album, the formula of overwhelming noise was becoming perhaps a little too familiar. There are still elements of their early guise present, but the need for change is clearly reducing the decibel levels.

It's odd that parts of it sound too careful.

If the album has a flaw, it's a lack of structure and differentiation; as the music progresses, songs become less distinct and less compelling. [Mar 2015, p.90]

It might be largely business as usual, then, but for all that A Place To Bury Strangers remain strangely comforting presence in an otherwise turbulent world. [Mar 2015, p.103]

Not one original note, but big fun for feedback fetishists. [Mar 2015, p.69]

Transfixiation generally features fairly quick songs that don't wallow too much in self-indulgent noisemaking. [Nov-Dec 2014, p.62]

Those who are coming into Transfixiation blind might just hear a notable band boasting a currently rare commitment to an '80s kind of noise-rock rather than the '90s iterations of shoegaze, goth, or industrial that’s more prominent in 2015. Then again, APTBS’ progress as a band only serves to expose the underlying one-dimensionality of their actual songwriting.

If you never liked APTBS, odds are you’re not about to start here.

Transfixiation’s weakest points are its fixations, when it lingers too long on a verse clearly aching for the payoff of a chorus or when it tries for serious by way of obscene.

Volume is fine, fuzz is good, but it shouldn’t obliterate the songs.

The volume and aggression are still there, but without any textures or atmospherics to give that aggression character, it all makes for an often-dull experience.

It’s not a bad or poorly constructed release by any means, but it is emotionally monotonous, the sound of three incredibly angry dudes spewing their grievances about the world while impassably dense guitar distortion splashes around them.

Transfixiation, named appropriately, demands a trance-like attention across its duration, but very little sticks once the ride is over.