CONCERT REVIEW: Sleigh Bells @ The Making Time Hyperrager, Festival Pier 7/21

The Brooklyn-based duo didn't just take the stage - they commandeered it and tore it to shreds.

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CONCERT REVIEW: Sleigh Bells @ The Making Time Hyperrager, Festival Pier 7/21

POSTED: Monday, July 23, 2012, 11:00 AM

Filed Under: Music Concert Review

Sleigh Bells may not be punk, but their fans know how to throw down. Making Time, the Philly-based concert-bookin’, record-releasin’, party-throwin’ entity, invited them to perform at their 12-year anniversary “Hyperrager” (yeah, no hyphen) this past Saturday at Festival Pier. Performing after Twin Shadow and Phantogram, the Brooklyn-based duo didn’t just take the stage — they commandeered it and tore it to shreds.

For all their noise, Sleigh Bells is still pop, pretty and polished. But singer Alexis Krauss exuded angst and sass in her trademark studded denim jacket and bangled wrists. Derek Miller, lead guitar, fooled us with his menacing countenance. And the band’s backdrop — 12 roaring Marshall amps, literally a wall of sound — made their two albums (Treats and Reign of Terror) come to life. Maybe they should have played with a full band (most songs consisted of a studio-recorded back beat with Strauss and Derek providing live vocals and electric guitar riffs), but the set was otherwise a riot. Behind an impenetrable (figurative) wall of front-row fans, we were going nuts.

A continual (albeit, non-injurious) mosh pit persisted from the opening song to the final chords. A few brave souls threaded their way in and out of the pit with professional cameras to capture the chaos. There was an air of camaraderie, a sense that our thrashing unified us. We sang all the words to “Rill Rill” and absolutely no one kept their cool when “True Shred Guitar” came on. Hope no limbs were broken.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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