Skrillex at the Pacific Coliseum

That’s it, folks. It’s finally happened: the album is dead. Time to don a black armband, pile all of your beloved LPs and CDs into a U-Haul, and cart them off to the dump. You’re not going to be needing that junk anymore. While you’re at it, strip all the album info out of your iTunes library and just put everything on Shuffle. The death knell of the format is, of course, the ascendancy of Skrillex. The fact that he has yet to release a full-length record (if he ever plans to do so) hasn’t kept the man born Sonny Moore from becoming one of the leading figures in contemporary music. Thanks to gold- and platinum-selling EPs like Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites and Bangarang—not to mention an instantly recognizable, if totally fucking hideous, hairstyle—Skrillex has risen to superstardom, winning Grammys and packing arenas with kids eager to trade what’s left of their hearing for 90 minutes of pinna-punishing bass drops. The boss of brostep brings his Full Flex Express Tour to the Pacific Coliseum on Sunday (July 22). Travelling by train, he will be bringing along electronica heavyweights like Diplo and Grimes, but you’re not going for them. You’re going for Skrillex, because Skrillex is the bomb. We don’t say that just because he blew the album format to smithereens; we say it because, after one of his sets, you’ll feel as if you’ve survived the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.