A record of reinvention _{by Madelaine Empson}

Freaks, unite! “We are packing up our synthesizers, glowsticks, and broken guitars and heading to Australia and New Zealand”, A Place to Bury Strangers declare. Wednesday the 11^th of February is the day you’ll need to brace for when the American rock band detonates their explosive new album Synthesizer at Meow.

Synthesizer is so named for a physical entity: a synthesizer made specifically for the band’s seventh album. After all, to reinvent one’s sound, one must also build a new instrument. The writing began in 2022, A Place to Bury Strangers then reformed with a new lineup. Frontman Oliver Ackermann remained at the helm, now joined by friends John and Sandra Fedowitz.

“It felt like a fresh new thing,” Ackermann says. “I wanted to write songs everyone was excited about playing.”

That sense of reimagination and connectivity crackles through the record.

“It’s pretty messed up, chaotic,” Ackermann describes, “but it feels really human.”

Synthesizer is romantic, colourful, loud as hell. Deliberately DIY, it is a record that celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community. In practice, it is a study on walls of noise and sound that explores what it means to twist and bend gear to its limits, to search for what Ackermann jokingly (and not jokingly) calls the “most epic sound journey”.

You’re invited to join A Place to Bury Strangers on that journey in what will be a raw and raucous night of revelry.