Show review: A Place To Bury Strangers, Apteka, The Big Sleep at The Empty Bottle, 3/21

By Gene Wagendorf III
 

APTBS bursting eardrums

Whether it was online or amongst the smokers on Western and Cortez, there was a whole lot of pre-show hubbub about just how loud the night was going to be. A Place To Bury Strangers have a reputation for playing at volumes that melt fingernails and boil ocular fluid. This is, after all, the band that famously sent earplugs out with copies of 2009's Exploding Head. Hell, they were selling official APTBS hi-fi earplugs at the merch table. There's no doubt that Brooklynite openers The Big Sleep were aware of what they'd be followed by, and boy did they try to compensate.

The Big Sleep kicked off their set with blaring, churning guitars and a healthy lump of distortion. The group's muddy, straight-forward rock showed hints of grooves and a cool riff here and there, but their greatest victory came in making sure they simply weren't pegged as the quiet band on the bill. Overcompensating crunch weighed a few numbers down and almost completely obscured the vocals. The most interesting moment of the set came about midway through, when a stumbling, hungover melody shambled over a stuttered drum beat. By this point I'd drifted back towards the bar, and the change up called for me to refocus. Something cool was about to happen. Instead, the melody found the toilet bowl and burst into a garbled sonic vomit. I'm a fan of noise, but as Charles Bukowski said, "if you're going to try, go all the way." The hooks and structure suggested that The Big Sleep might be better as a focused,  high-octane rock band. In the end, they came across like a group that had yet to commit either way.