The Freaks were out . . . the Woos! A Place To Bury Strangers plays Bar Le Ritz

A Place To Bury Strangers played last night at Bar Le Ritz; a punk bar with a walloping sound system. Liquid was fighting gravity when The Mall took the stage to open. He was a lone wolf with energy to spare. A punk DJ of sorts who screamed into the mic and held the floor. It wasn’t my bag but I respect the dedication. He was funny. Between songs he said, “Are there any freaks out here tonight? If you’re a freak, yell out your name!”

“Woo!!”

“A lot of people named Woo out here tonight!”

He continued his set.

A Place To Bury Strangers has been around since the early 2000s. Many of the crowd were fifty-somethings waiting for the main event. They had their band shirts on: The Cramps, Acid Mothers Temple, Health x Purturbator. They didn’t need the DJ stuff but they were polite. Heavy rock people have an outlet. Some of them were plumbers who got in touch with their younger selves for the night. Others had never changed, and you could tell.

I grabbed a beer with my girlfriend at a bar just east of Le Ritz on Jean Talon before the show and the contrast of the pedestrians was startling. “Geez, I know where they’re going. And we’re about to go there.”

The venue was filled with these fifty-somethings and some young punks. There were also the baseball cap-wearing white t-shirt Montreal guys who seem to be everywhere in the city–I was one of those guys.

We stocked up on beers and my girlfriend weaved us to the front row before A Place To Bury Strangers took to the stage. I don’t know the band and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would pick that name and that name only to call themselves. A name they would stand by for decades. Most band names are no good, it’s a tough game.

We had the front-row seat. A seat that should be reserved for the passionate fans–the fifty-somethings or at least the young punks who need to learn their roots. Not long after we settled in, some ponytail guy butted us into the second row. He didn’t even do a courtesy crouch for ten to fifteen seconds. He stood straight up and turned back to cheers me. That crossed my wires, I started to like him.

The trio walked out and started with a bang. A strobe light portrayed a guitar-weaving noodle wiggling his way across the stage frame by frame. It was really very cool. They were loud too. You’d think I was the fifty-something-year-old’s parents. I had ear plugs and my left one wouldn’t settle. It was itchy and I started swiping at it. I almost seizured when this was combined with the thumping music and the strobe lights.

Ponytail guy was a true fan. He was whipping that thing around and swiping his arm in front of him like a lady waving the checkered flag before a race. He started to spill his drink on this girl bit by bit. Then he dumped it on her calf. She made a face and then turned to her boyfriend. He held her as ponytail guy tried to apologize. I thought he would come to his senses but he proceeded to step in front of her and start waving his ass in her direction. He was simply a true fan.

A Place To Bury Strangers belted out their stuff. The lyrics almost seemed like an interlude between the thrashing guitar and bass. A lady worked up the courage to crowd-surf just as a song ended. It was a silent crowd surf. That idea had never occurred to me.

A song or two later, the band thrust themselves into the crowd and the whole show started going down on the far end of the venue. There was some sort of recorded chant playing in the speakers with a lot of delay. The drums were pounding and the band members were in the middle of the crowd. I looked towards the drumkit and nobody was there. That's about when we made for the door.

The exit was on the far side. I’m not sure what was happening in the middle of the venue but beams of light were shooting out of there. They appeared to have their own light ball with them in the middle of the crowd. I caught a glimpse of the main man Oliver Ackermann, and he was holding his guitar out while the crowd swiped its strings. The whole thing was getting wild and we circumnavigated the crowd–the stage was now barren.

The fifty-somethings and the punks were closing in on the band. They had the white t-shirt baseball cap guys for support. I’m not sure where it went from there.