Twenty One Pilots

Twenty One Pilots is one of those bands I can say I’m glad to have seen once, but I don’t really to see ever again. They put on a fantastic live show, but I’m not too terribly impressed by the music. I feel like they’re love it or hate it, and I never loved it enough to catch on before they became entirely too overplayed and now sorta get on my nerves a little. Whoops.

Honestly I had never really listened to them before my friend Panda told me he had an extra ticket to their show at the Forum in LA, and I was planning on being in LA that weekend anyway for two other shows that I really wanted to see (St. Ranger and the World/Inferno Friendship Society if you’re curious). So I figured why not, they’re blowing like every chart there is out of the water, let’s see what all this fuss is about. And he swore that they put on the best live show he’d ever seen.

I say I hadn’t listened to them, but I was actually really surprised by how much of their music I knew once they were actually playing it in front of me. Again, whoops.

Backtrack time? Mutemath opened and I actually knew a few of their songs.

I remembered some video that at the time I couldn’t place (it was this one btw) that I really liked in like high school or something, and I knew that was why I knew the name Mutemath.

But they also had a song in Twilight. Yes, I was a teenage girl when the book/movie first came out. No shame.

Okay, so Twenty One Pilots.

They were very theatrical, so that was fun. They had videos playing behind them in the background and between songs. There were some videos of the band, with some story that was really hard for me to follow, but I liked it. It was kinda trippy at times.

At one point drummer Josh Dun moved his entire drumset on top of the crowd and played there. I had never seen anything like that, so props where props are due. They also magically moved to a completely new location at a few other points in the show. Once it was to the back of the pit, another time it was the stands of the arena. It was always something.

We were actually near the back of the pit, so when they all of a sudden were magically there, we ran to the front and there we were! That worked out nicely.

I was also happy about our location because the crowd was super tightly packed but we were far enough back that it wasn’t really a problem.

I wondered if the masks they came out wearing had anything to do with the illusions. Was it different people? Not Tyler and Josh? But they performed with the masks on, so it had to be them. I don’t even know.

There was another time during the show when the entire crowd squatted down, and that’s when I discovered that my knees and ankles had swollen up for no apparent reason. #TMIwithLindsay

Overall, they were a bit too poppy for me, but it wasn’t bad. I got into it, and as Panda said, they do put on a killer live show. There was kinda a lot going on at one time, but they have great showmanship and are really entertaining. Not my cup of tea, but I can appreciate it.