The acclaimed noise rock outfit A Place to Bury Strangers, essentially Oliver Ackerman’s group with several different lineup changes over the years, has now been at it for over 20 years. After seven well-received studio albums, Ackerman has just released a new rarities compilation, Rare and Deadly, with tracks spanning 2015–2025, and on Ackerman’s own label, Dedstrange.
The first track I listened to, “Acid Rain”, is light, airy, and effervescent. Whimsical, even. No, just kidding, it is wildly intense, starting with a rumbling riff—call it some techno-metal guitar?—and a thumping rhythm. A Place to Bury Strangers always literally sounds like no one else because Ackerman is not only relentlessly creative musically but also constantly inventing his own pedals and effects. A few of these 25 tracks are pretty clearly experiments (“Deranged”, for example, has some chunky, vaguely R&B-ish riffs), but all of them could have been welcome additions to one of the group’s regular albums.
Ackerman is also the founder of Death By Audio, a go-to stop for guitarists seeking the latest and best in custom guitar pedals and effects. Artists like U2, TV on the Radio, and Lou Reed have been customers, and the merchandise sports names like Fuzz War and Absolute Destruction.
PopMatters had a chance to speak with Ackerman shortly before he and A Place to Bury Strangers began their current European tour. In A Place to Bury Strangers, there is always a method to the madness, and it is controlled chaos. Still, considering the music and some of his lyrics (e.g., new, from “Energy”: “I dream / A future where we live in perfect harmony / Our bodies sync to all the waves of all the seas / Then my eyes open / I’m screaming at your grave”), I was concerned that Ackerman might be a bit intense and maybe a challenge to interview.
Thankfully, Ackerman turned out to be rather calm and quite sane. Affable even. It was a great chance to talk with and learn about one of the more interesting musicians/creators out there.
Where are you at, physically and geographically, right now?
I’m in Ridgewood, Queens, and at the Death By Audio space. We’ve lived in Queens for a long time.
Right. So, Rare and Deadly. Your promo materials describe it as you cracking open a decade-long vault from 2015 to 2025? A vault of “raw nerve and sonic chaos”, and it is also called “less a compilation than a documentary.” What made you decide to release a rarities collection at this time?
Writing more and more music and everything, I just thought all of this music was just gonna get lost and left behind, and I thought some of these songs were real contenders for being on some of those past albums and really just spoke to all that time of those past ten years of what was happening, the transition of A Place to Bury Strangers and all of these things. I don’t know if there’s ever going to be like re-releases of those old records or anything, so this just seemed like a way to document that kind of past journey, you know, give a chance for these songs to sort of have some light.
As I started searching back for some of this stuff, I just found all sorts of even more songs to where there was too many songs to work with so I decided maybe I’ll just split this up between different formats and make it sort of something kind of unique and weird and sort of a, you know, fuck what an album is’ or something. This is just like some other songs and different ways of putting them out.
I would expect you not to do anything normal, right? You have to do something crazy with it. [Laughs] Ya, so that’s really cool, so you have it released on CD, cassette, vinyl, and digital editions. As you mentioned, there are 25 songs, with different groupings across formats and different setlists on each release.
All of your music can get pretty heavy, but never nihilistic. Do you feel that way, like some of the lyrics are pretty intense, but I always get the feeling, almost like it’s uplifting.
Yeah, I mean, I guess, so. You go to sort of maybe that’s the kind of the arc of some of those things where it’s dark, but there’s some sweetness back behind this sort of thing, you know? It’s like, there’s maybe a terrible idea that’s posed or a terrible idea that’s like weaving through one of some of these stories, but I think they do end up with some bit of hope or something at the very end? I don’t know, I don’t know. Yeah, that’s a good point. Maybe you’re saying that, maybe I should write even darker, more depressing songs or something or…? [laughs]
[Laughs] No, no. I mean, some of the lyrics are pretty crazy, though, I guess some maybe just straight industrial bands that are like that, which is not really what you are.
Yeah, yeah, that stuff. I guess I’m more of a person who enjoys too many things or something. Who knows?
Yeah, right. A lot of stuff, a lot of different stuff going on.
Yeah.
I also see that your promotional materials mentioned “using malfunctioning pedals” and “pushing gear beyond its limits”. Is that something you do consciously? Is it part of what your songwriting process is like, like breaking stuff, or does that just happen?
I don’t know. It’s kind of what you’re sort of like being somebody who’s searching for sounds and doing all of this you’re kind of always looking for these sounds or like what’s the most fucked up and twisted kind of sound you can [inaudible] here, and so that evolves like experimenting with, you know: Will this break this kind of thing? Then what does that sound like?
So, I never even really quite thought of it like that, but it is, you know, that was always sort of the magic thing just starting out, like putting one distortion pedal into another distortion pedal into another distortion pedal. You’re, like, whoa, this sounds crazy, what is happening here, so that’s kind of like things being used, and it’s like an unintentional way of how those circuits are pushing and breaking and all of that.
So, how did you get into this technical side of music? Growing up, were you a technical kind of electronics, science fair kid, or how did it happen?
No, not at all. I always had the feeling that, and maybe from watching other people, do these things, and that you could do anything if you just put your mind to it, and so that was just being in a band in Virginia and not having really any help doing these things. You know, we didn’t have any record labels or anything. We’d be booking our own tours and building our own stuff, and we’d go to recording studios, and they would treat us like we were like, like little kids or outcasts or something that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. So that didn’t really connect for us.
So, we would be trying to do this stuff on our own, recording on cassette machines and building stuff. When you start to hear different sounds, I was always, like, ‘Oh, there’s got to be more crazier sounds out there.’ So, I started taking things apart. When you have amplifiers that break on the road, you gotta hook two of them together to make it work, and do all this kind of stuff that was just really sort of out of the necessity of wanting to hear sounds and music and make all these things work.
So, eventually, you’re just going down that path more and more and more, and you start reading books about electronics, and you start taking this stuff apart. I don’t know, it’s a constant passion. It’s pretty cool that I was able to, I think, make sort of like a job out of this that I really love doing. Now, I get to work with all sorts of people who are searching and exploring sound in all kinds of ways. It’s great.
Wow. So, you had no formal training at all, just self-taught, DIY?
Yeah, but I did go to school for industrial design, and so I definitely had an idea of, like, needing a work ethic and the confidence to be able to drill through metal and do like welding and some sorts of things, you know? It was at least introduced to me, so you could see the possibilities for what could be done with some of this stuff, or even just the design considerations. I think these things are important in some ways when you’re building something that you’re going to interact with, or how is this going to work structurally? You know, I can rebuild a guitar in some way that works for what we want to do for our show, or all of that kind of stuff.
All right, what are you listening to right now, outside of your band and your own label? Anything else?
Yeah, tons of stuff, like that band [inaudible] is cool. That band Adult is awesome. A bunch of the kids who are over here at Death by Audio. They have cool bands, which are awesome. I don’t know, I think this is just a cool time for music, where there’s kind of a lot of things coming out, which is really cool.
Right. You’ve had your own label since 2021. What is it? I want to say Dedstrange. Is that right? Yeah, so, how’s that going? How do you like having a label?
It’s good, I mean, it’s good and bad. There are those things where, like, it’s cool to be able to help artists out, you know, and I really appreciate it. Kind of like doing that a lot, but it’s also like you see why other people, why it’s good to have other people having labels, as well, too, because there’s just sort of a lot of work doing that stuff, being able to do this, and you kind of feel like you wish you could help out these bands even more than you can. So that’s always tough, you know, but it’s been great, and it’s been great for A Place to Bury Strangers.
We get to do whatever we want, which is pretty nice, you know? So, yeah, that’s pretty cool, but it was also fun working with labels, and there’s something really cool about that, and a bunch of those people at labels, we still have great relationships with, and it was fun to do that stuff, too. I don’t know, it’s fun to even try different things. So, this is cool to be able to do stuff on our own terms and, yeah, we can do whatever the heck we want, so maybe it wouldn’t have even been possible to do Rare and Deadly if we’re on another label. Maybe it would, who knows?
Yeah, right. What sort of bands have you signed to your label? What are you looking for? Is it all noise rock, or is there anything specific you’re looking for?
I feel like it’s bands that I’m just really drawn to the music. You know, I don’t know if I could even put my finger on exactly what it is about those bands. I think they’re all awesome bands and super talented, amazing people who are super creative, and writing rad songs and all that. It has a similar edge to a lot of the music we’re involved in, whether it’s part of the DIY scene or something kind of punky or noisy. So, there are those elements. Some are like, friends of friends, so all sorts of stuff.
If I feel like we could help some band out, then I’m really trying to do that, then that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s kind of the point of the label, in a way, is to sort of be there to support artists that we think everybody should hear.
So, in 2024, Synthesizer. The vinyl version came with the album cover, which was an actual working syntheziser that you created just for that album. It’s like the coolest merchandise album tie-in ever, I think. So, how did that idea come up?
I’d been looking at the prices of circuit boards, and we build all sorts of things with circuit boards over here, and they’re just kind of so beautiful. So that was all it happened—toying with the idea of making just an album cover that was a circuit board because it just looks pretty. It’s like metal, and fiberglass, and all that, and then, at the same time, I’m building a lot of synthesizers that we’ve been bringing on tour, and I have cases and different kinds of effects and whatnot that you can kind of control. So it just seemed possible.
We just took a really big gamble and designed the synthesizer mostly in thin air, without really listening to exactly what it would sound like. Then, because time ended up being a crunch at that point, we had only one working synthesizer. We recorded the album with it, and then we had that as our only prototype until we made the changes and ordered the real synthesizer. It was an insane gamble, whether it was going to work and all if it was gonna happen, and it makes sense? But I think it was worth it because you know, now, people, if they want to make that crazy noise, but that sounds totally bananas, they can do it.
Could you ever make one where you could just… I wanted to buy it, but I’m not a musician at all, and you need… I was hoping it could just be like a USB, plug it into my computer?
Oh yes, yeah, sure, yeah, maybe that’s the next one. Let’s see.
Could you do that?
Yeah, sure. It’s possible. Yeah, any of that stuff is possible, so it’s just a matter of working that out. I think that’s one of those things when designing effects and all of these things, and even releasing songs, anything is possible, it’s just sort of what you curate, you’re kind of up to, “Is this effect a good idea?”, or “Do you stand by this idea?” or something? So, I think the USB stick, I don’t know how it would necessarily relate, but you’d have to come up with some kind of cool, creative concept. I think, where you know? Maybe it’s, I don’t know, virtual worlds or something, or I don’t know. It’s a good idea.
Right. Let me know. Let me know. I will buy it. I’ll buy at least one.
Okay, cool.
So, the last question, the most important question, what’s your favorite under-the-radar album of all time?
Favorite under-the-radar album of all time. Gosh, that’s a tough one, let’s see. Let me see. Let me look at my phone real quick, see if I’ve got a good one.
They can’t be on your label.
Oh yeah, of course, not. I wouldn’t pick that anyway. Let’s see. Favorite under the radar label ball time. I love that Brian Borcherdt. First record. That self-titled one that was awesome. I think it’s self-titled at least. I love that Ashrae Fax record. Have you ever heard of that?
No, huh-uh.
I don’t know favorite from all-time, Nazis From Mars. That’s a fun record.
Who’s that? Is that a band name? I’ve never heard of them.
Ya. Nazis From Mars, they’re a band, they’re long gone. It’s pretty fun. It sounds pretty messed up. I like that Owl’s record, that’s really good. I love Baby Land, that album “Structure Fall” is a good one. [The song name is actually the first track on the LP, You Suck Crap.]
All right. Cool.
That’s a great one. I’ll stand by that.
That sounds good. Anything else in particular you’re working on?
Yeah, working on another record for A Place to Bury Strangers. It’s getting close, so that’ll probably be the beginning of next year. We’re planning on a bunch of tours and have been building a lot of stuff for those. Trying to bring out a lot of new stuff and new songs, and some of those songs from Rare and Deadly, and build them a lot of electronics, and there’ll be lots of that new stuff coming out pretty soon. We’ll see.
