This Friday gone I attended twenty one pilots at the 3arena, a band I would have been familiar with, but not much outside of the major radio hits, but for what the concert was, it was near perfect.
The stage setup was immaculate and the transitions between songs were incredibly well rehearsed.
The lead singer came out in what I assume is his signature balaclava, and sang and played a few songs.
At one point the lead singer jumped into a hole on the floor of the stage and instantly, and I mean instantly, the lights shifted up to a maintenance platform high above the seating area to the left, and there he was, he sang a bit and then took off the balaclava to reveal that it actually was him up there and not a stunt double, they had obviously done the switch on the stage at some point that was so smooth nobody realised.
With cinematic theme changes between sections of the shows, going from the bright red stage setup of their new album, to a post apocalyptic looking setup for an older album, a switch which included, among other things, a large torch that was actually lit, which was paraded past the edge of the crowd.
They mad multiple b stages and even floating stages held up by the crowd as they would hold up a crowd surfer.
For one song they brought up a young boy from the crowd called Cian and got him to sing some of a song with him, which was genuinely heartwarming.
A concert with so much crowd interaction, including two small stages set up in the crowd for the final song, both of which would’ve been no bigger than maybe thirty square feet each.
A highlight of the show is when the lead singer got the crowd to put down their flashlights and then queued different sections of the crowd to raise and then lower their flashlights on separate beats of a song, creating an amazing effect.
Stage Setup: 10/10, an amazingly set up stage, including multiple B stages out in the crowd, aswell as moving stages, and floating stages carried by the crowd, and the main stage itself was done meticulously, giant screens surrounded the stage and played both live footage and video effects
Band performance: 10/10, an incredibly talented singer, with high energy throughout the show, even throughout all the running, jumping and balaclava wearing, his voice did not falter, the drummer of the band may be one of the best live drummers I’ve seen in my days of concert going, incredibly gifted at what he does
Support: 8/10, Balu Brigada was the name of the support band, I had heard nothing of them, a band hailing from New Zealand who make very energetic and rather quality music, they did a great job of working up the crowd for the main act.
Merchandise: 5/10, this is where the concert faltered, merch was available but it was very generic and very pricy for what it is, a hoodie with just a logo and text on the front and nothing on the back would set you back 80, a jacket made out of cheap looking material was 120, could have been much better
Crowd: 10/10, a crowd who you could see were really passionate about the music and about the experience, which was helped greatly with the amount of crowd interaction from the two members of the band
Overall: 9/10, for what it was it is a very hard concert to fault, while it may not be my taste I had a great time, a very interactive band that are incredibly talented and clearly seasoned in what they do, with a crowd that was taking all that energy from the stage and giving it back tenfold
Next up: Stereophonics 6/6/25
Jays Concert Blog 