Every Copy of A Place To Bury Strangers’ ‘Rare And Deadly’ Has a Different Tracklist

A Place To Bury Strangers’ latest release isn’t a conventional compilation. “Rare And Deadly,” a collection of unreleased tracks and rarities spanning years of the Brooklyn trio’s career, arrives with no two physical copies sharing the same tracklist. It’s an unorthodox move that makes perfect sense coming from Oliver Ackermann.

The frontman and Death By Audio founder has spent decades dismantling instruments, amps, and any other piece of gear that stands between him and a specific sound. That break-stuff ethos is as central to his guitar pedal company as it is to his band. “When I got into noise music and extreme noise music, that just seemed like, ‘How can I deconstruct these instruments to create other new sounds?’” he says. “That’s when I started tinkering and pulling apart amps.”

With so many leftover songs to choose from, Ackermann didn’t want a bloated multi-disc box set. “There were too many songs to put on one record,” he explains. “I really didn’t want to do some giant triple-disc thing. So we broke them apart into different bits.” The result is an object that echoes his disregard for rigid rules. It functions less like a definitive document and more like an invitation to hear the band’s discards—each listener getting a slightly different angle.

Ackermann’s view on tools applies directly here. Don’t get precious. What matters is the output, not the prescribed format. For a band that built its name on destabilizing rock structures, a randomized tracklist feels less like a gimmick and more like an honest extension of the work.