by Marcus Bonner

Almost all of South Jersey and Montgomery County’s corniest white people turned out en masse to the Electric Factory Friday night to enjoy the sights and sounds of The Glitch Mob’s Love Death Immortality tour. The show was everything the band had promised and more, with an elaborately assembled set, energetic on-stage theatrics and a backdrop of trippy visuals synced rhythmically and thematically to each song.

Quirky raver types were eerily outnumbered by polo shirt/cocktail dress combos, but all that melted away as the night got underway. Opening with “Mind of a Beast”, The Glitch Mob’s set immediately had the crowd moving. It speaks to the band’s credit that by the third song in, everyone in the jam-packed venue was dancing, including some fairly obvious lifetime non-dancers.

Things were in full swing by the time “Skullclub” began, and the digital-sounding lyrics “WE ARE…” blaring a capella on the sound system and echoed in staticky bright red letters on screen elicited screams in anticipation of a drop which, when it finally came, morphed the venue into a cacophonous blur of headbanging and swirling glow sticks.The screen behind The Glitch Mob displayed everything from high-res CGI water droplets and flames to psychedelic fractals to 8-bit silhouettes of Edward “edIT” Ma’s fun new faux hawk bobbing frantically.

The opener, Ana Sia had gotten things started with a live DJ set which, in an Ableton-ridden 21st century, was pretty impressive. The people meandering about the Electric Factory enjoyed Sia’s set, but the general air of anticipation had the unfortunate effect of assimilating it into the white noise of background chatter.

When all was said and done, The Glitch Mob made it clear that there would be no encore as bouncers encouraged people to filter out.