Andrew Veeder on August 19th, 2014

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The audience simmered with excitement just before show time at the heavily anticipated, one-off Death From Above 1979 show at the Troubadour on Thursday night. A Steadicam operator tightened the stabilization rig of his camera on stage right. An assistant ran cable. Attendants lined the back staircase. Hooting and hollering peppered the landscape as the bass-heavy interlude music boomed through the venue after Big Black Delta‘s opening set. The lights went down, and there was an eruption of applause. Shadows moved about against the lofted green room’s curtains. A tech repositioned the bass guitar. Smoke poured out onto the stage. The iconic neon Troubadour sign bathed the dark room in a soft blue glow. And then the massive DFA1979 logo came on, an illuminated seven-foot representation of the pair’s classic elephant trunk faces, standing at the back as Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler took the stage.

The dynamic dance-punk duo opened with “You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine,” the title track from their 2004 album, and continued their sonic assault, blaring through 19 songs in just over an hour – including the entirety of their forthcoming, long-awaited sophomore album, “The Physical World,” due Sept. 9.

The new material banged just as hard as the old stuff, perhaps even harder, and they played it all tighter and with more intensity than on the 2011 reunion tour that followed a five-year break-up. The blistering new “Right On, Frankenstein!” and “Government Trash” sounded much bigger than just the two of them, and much bigger than the 400-person capacity of the Troubadour. Even the stage seemed small as Keeler whipped his hair back and forth as he whipped up a frenzy of bass riffs, and the crowd ate it up. During the new single “Trainwreck 1979,” the mosh pit accelerated the camera man’s journey to the front by launching him forward without missing a step.

Grainger, who admitted he’s never been good with banter or jokes, fumbled through a break four songs in as a tech named Ace performed surgery on his kick drum pedal. His repartee throughout the night included questions like, “What’s new aside from everyone getting beat up by the police?” and, “You know why people are so dirty? Because they text and sh*t at the same time.” At one point, Keeler asked the crowd, “Who all bought tickets when this sold out at noon?” to which Grainger followed the cheering by saying, “It’s cool when you sell something out in a span of time that doesn’t exist.”

After charging through 16 songs and walking away, they returned to the stage. “So what do you want to hear?” asked Grainger as he settled in behind the drums for the encore, before launching into the thunderous “Little Girl,” and the Crystal Castles-sampling “Dead Womb” from their 2002 EP “Heads Up.” They closed the night with their smash “Romantic Rights,” and from the opening riff, not a single person in the audience was standing still. Death From Above 1979 are truly a force to be reckoned with on stage; they are back, and better than ever.

Setlist: You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine; Cheap Talk; Right On, Frankenstein!; Turn It Out; Blood On Our Hands; Cold War; Virgins; Crystal Ball; Government Trash; Going Steady; Gemini; Nothin’ Left; White Is Red; Trainwreck 1979; Always On; The Physical World. Encore — Little Girl; Dead Womb; Romantic Rights.