Trial By Fire: Creepoid, No Devotion and more break in The Fillmore’s Foundry

Creepoid | Photo by Chris Sikich | sikichphotography.com

The Foundry at The Fillmore was first christened with music on Sunday via a Questlove DJ set, but it was not until last night that guitars amplifiers echoed within its 400 capacity room. And boy, was it a raucous affair of four bands – with Philly’s Creepoid in the headliner slot – destroying and reforming the essence of rock for a modest, but certainly excitable Philly crowd.

First up was Philly-based Socialite. They may have only been on stage for less than 20 minutes, but they certainly shredded through the ears of the early arrivals. With the summer release of the 7” I See You / I Don’t Care as a stepping stone to a punk future, the quartet has talent to build on.

The remaining three bands were en route to CMJ from Philly for a show on Wednesday. Wax Idols were up next and delivered jaw-dropping emo-rock straight from the pages of 1980s playbooks with a sensibility all their own. Led by Hether Fortune, who varied her presentation with blisteringly beautiful vocals and a 12-string guitar, she and four other superb musicians blinded the engaged crowd with their emotive depths.

No Devotion rocked hard in the penultimate lineup slot. The supergroup features Geoff Rickly from Thursday – who also founded Collect Records, Creepoid’s label – along with most of the members of Lostprophets, and they put on a clinic of shoegaze punk. Rickly wrapped the crowd around his finger with his impassioned vocal delivery and energetic stage presence. This was countered by the bombast of the rest of the band, playing mostly work from their recent debut record Permanence.

Then it was time for Creepoid, one of Philly’s most underrated rock outfits. The lights dimmed and the band’s fog effects mixed with their own colored lights from the stage, enveloping the band in multicolor mystery. Add to that the yellow lights that beamed from the ceiling straight down onto the stage and lead bassist and vocalist extraordinaire Anna Troxell’s E.T. shirt and it looked like the whole venue was going to shoot into outer space.

With the setlist mostly drawing from their spectacular 2015 LP Cemetery Highrise Slum, the tight four-piece spun tunes in a punk blender and poured out a heaping cup full of awesome. In almost total darkness, singer and guitarist Sean Miller and the guitar / e-bow specialist Nick Kulp were the elastic outer skin of the band while Anna and husband/drummer Pat Troxell were the inner guts always churning between the fog and oblivion.

This all climaxed with Anna writhing on the floor and finally Pat throwing his drumkit at the audience. A performance as singular and as memorable as any this year, it was quite a way to open a new venue in Philly.