THE SO-CALLED “LOUDEST”

A Place to Bury Strangers

Venue: Death by Audio rehearsal space, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Visit the band's official site

Photograph: Michael Kirby

The dead-center spot in A Place to Bury Strangers’ rehearsal room has to be the loudest two feet we’ve ever wandered into—kind of like a private wind-tunnel concert with Kevin Shields whipping up a wave of distortion in one corner and ghosts of indie rock’s past (the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth) mangling psych-pop hooks in the other. Coincidentally, APTBS’ frontman, Oliver Ackermann, just sold a complete set of custom Death by Audio guitar pedals to Mr. My Bloody Valentine himself.

Good thing we’re here to test the LOUDEST BAND IN NEW YORK claim that’s plastered across the shrink-wrap of APTBS’ self-titled 2007 debut—a loaded tag line that flew off the fingers of an adjective-happy blogger and stuck. Not without merit, either: The band’s latest ten-inch, “To Fix the Gash in Your Head,” exceeded suggested volume levels by so much that it broke the vinyl-pressing plant. We’re armed with a decibel meter and some instruction from soundman Baker Lee of Studio Instrument Rentals.

“We’re not trying to impress anyone,” Ackermann says. “We’re just playing what sounds good to us.” And that does include a certain level of volume.

“Before I joined the band,” explains APTBS bassist Jono MOFO, “something happened to my right ear at one of their shows. Every once in a while, it happens again—this fucking pain where it pops and I can’t hear.”

How comforting. While our plugless ears hold up under a three-song APTBS set, they are treated to some serious guitar-pedal action—shape-shifting riffs that sound like the whoosh of a helicopter one second and the whir of a lawn mower running over rocks the next. Let’s see how three other infamously loud New York bands compare.

THE DAMAGE: 114 dB

THE CHALLENGERS

Mouthus

Venue: Mouthus’s rehearsal space, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Visit the band's official site

Photograph: Michael Kirby

Oh, the things a person can do with a guitar and some effects pedals—especially if that person happens to be Brian Sullivan of Mouthus. Longtime denizens of the underground noise scene, Sullivan and drummer Nate Nelson have been name-dropped by everyone from J Mascis to their sometime label boss Thurston Moore. (The Sonic Youth frontman will release a limited LP of synth-driven Mouthus pieces later this year.)

They are constantly searching for something beyond the distorted, deafening tropes of acts like Wolf Eyes and Merzbow, though. “We could do [noise tracks] until the end of fucking time,” Sullivan says, “but I’m sure people would get bored with it. We certainly would.”

One stereotype Sullivan quickly erases—at least as it relates to Mouthus—is the idea that noise musicians are simply frying their amps for the fuck of it. A few minutes of watching him churn out unedited chords reveals everything from strangled tones to a low guttural hum that, frankly, makes us feel kinda funny down there…like a strategically placed cell phone set to vibrate.

THE DAMAGE: 110 dB

Black Dice

Venue: Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Visit the band's official site

If one New York act is notorious for mushroom-cloud chords, it’s Black Dice. Together since 1997, the band is somewhat tame now—with a dare-we-say danceable sound of crisscrossing synths, but in the beginning the Dice had more in common with hardcore punk than anything else. Let’s just say that tales of broken bottles (and faces) from the early era are not uncommon.

“It was exciting to have a really confrontational performance,” says multi-instrumentalist Aaron Warren. “But after a while it made sense to refine the music and challenge the audience and ourselves in different ways.” Yeah, like through vomit-inducing volume levels, which apparently peaked at a Richard Phillips art opening in 2001 at Friedrich Petzel Gallery—a gig Warren remembers as “probably our loudest show ever. It was a tiny room and we had just started using power heads for our amps.”

These days, Warren insists that “loudness is more about the physical feeling than the aural spectrum.” Meanwhile, our meter equates these guys with a pipe bomb to the gut, but the Black Dice racket is actually rhythmic enough to reveal what terrible dancers we are.

THE DAMAGE: 121 dB*
*They overloaded the max setting (126 dB) several times.

Psychic Ills

Venue: Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Visit the band's official site

Photograph: Jason Noto

While the band’s shows used to embody the title of its 2006 EP, Early Violence, Psychic Ills has since fallen into a realm of groove-riding bliss.

“I prefer volume as a means of engagement rather than a repellent,” says frontman Tres Warren. “I’ve heard communications between birds, insects and lizards in a Mexican jungle that pushed my mind’s ear beyond human or amplified sound.” While that may be true, Psychic Ills has played its fair share of deafening shows. “One time, some crazy barged in with flailing arms,” recalls bassist Elizabeth Hart. “He came up and tried to turn our amps down. I gathered that he was offended by the volume, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.” Not so much L-O-U-D as a never-ending loop of shimmering chords, Psychic Ills reminds us why gravity bongs are a great idea sometimes.

THE WINNER

According to our decibel-meter measurements, A Place to Bury Strangers is not the loudest band in New York. Black Dice is—by an earth-shaking seven decibels on average. What do the dethroned champs have to say about that? “It’s not about decibel levels,” counters MOFO, smiling. “It’s about making ears bleed.”