Crystal Castles Throw Punches and a Bass Drum at Security

It's easily been a few months since Canadian electro-duo Crystal Castles has pulled some on-stage shenanigans, but for those clamoring for a new dose of controversy, we turn to Barcelona's Sonar Festival. At a gig over the weekend, vocalist Alice Glass got into it with a security guard, throwing both a punch and a bass drum at one. According to NME, the set was plagued with sound problems, leading Glass to take out her frustrations on some poor, innocent, beefy stage protectors. Naturally, it's already on YouTube.

The first reports of the incident came from the Twitter feed of electropop artist Little Boots, who was also playing the festival. "Woah just watched crystal castles at sonar, sound was awful throughout kept cutting out so at te [sic] end alice started trashing the stage," she posted. "Then the sound guy tried to rugby tackle her so ethan jumped out and punched him! Massive!" She followed it up later with another Tweet that read "Ok just spoke to alice apparently it was her who socked him one ha ha."

Crystal Castles temperament hasn't always been such a thing of positivity when it comes to a venue's sound quality. Back in April, the duo was scheduled to play the Granada Theater in Dallas, when they abruptly canceled "as the venue was unable to deliver the audio production required for a CC show." They also accused their opening band Vega of stealing an effects pedal from them at a gig the previous night, which prompted not only Vega's firing from their opening slot, but also a good ol' fashion Internet blame game between the bands and the venue's owner.

So, a few lessons we're now learning: when booking Crystal Castles, make sure you have the highest grade audio capabilities that will deliver the resolution that an act needs to deliver glitchy, 8-bit style electo-punk. Also, when having a bass drum thrown at you, the best thing is to take a cue from the era they riff off: jump over it like Donkey Kong and you'll be fine. Check out the video below.