You’d get the sense, watching nihilist, banshee-woman Alice Glass perform that Crystal Castles were bred for smaller, less-restrictive concert venues than the mighty House of Blues Houston. The band sure have had a meteoric rise in recent months, most likely due to our culture’s embrace of EDM, which Crystal Castles are not, however you dissect it, but their sudden stadium-status seemed counter to the band’s early

DIY ways. At Saturday night’s sold out show however, the duo, Glass and stoic synth/beat conducter Ethan Kath, alongside touring drummer Christopher Chartland, unequivocally flourished in the sold out 1,500 capacity setting, charging the crowd with an intense, hedonistic energy that made for one of the most memorable shows in recent memory.

hit the jump for the full recap.

– sunbear

Wasting absolutely no time turning her deranged frontwoman energy up to 11, Glass was walking upon the crowd (not through, mind you: upon) by the band’s second song “Baptism,” her tiny frame supported effortlessly by her adoring fans, as she shrieked incomprehensibly into her microphone. This would be the first of about a dozen stage dives Glass would do over the course of the night, never once losing steam, and never once failing to cause people to lose their collective shit.

Performing an equally portioned variance of each of their three self-titled albums to the epileptic dazzle of strobe lights and a volume so intense it threatened the structural foundation of the venue, Crystal Castles made themselves a force of nature, a lightning blitzkrieg attack of “Doe Deer” and “Alice Practice.” Even the band’s quieter moments, like the Mega Man chiptune of “Black Panther” and the gateway drug “Crimewave” were hardly a breather from the band’s hedonist warfare tactics.

There was even a point early on in the first three songs where a fellow photographer turned to me as we stood side stage, snapping away, and muttered into my ear the we had just narrowly missed being impaled by a thrown microphone stand by Glass. Pure no-fucks-given recklessness.

Closing out the main set with the one-two punch of the overly dramatic “Sad Eyes” and arguably their most popular song “Not In Love,” the house light’s came up giving a much needed reprieve of the onslaught of strobes as Glass stood in the middle, not so much above the crowd, but part of them, echoing out the latter song’s final chilly embrace of “we are not in love!” – a pretty and extraordinary finish to a frenzied, and not infrequently sadistic performance.

SETLIST:
Plague
Baptism
Suffocation
Wrath of God
Crimewave
Telepath
Alice Practice
Black Panther
Celestica
Vanished/Untrust Us/Transgender/Cryptocracy
Reckless
Insulin
Sad Eyes
Not in Love

Vietnam/Kerosene/$$ Trooper
Doe Deer
Intimate
Yes No