Review: Twenty One Pilots leave crowd 'fed and happy'

By Katie Fitzgerald of RNZ

Typically, an artist visits New Zealand at the end of an Australasian tour leg, with our little country tacked on as a bonus.

This was not the case on Sunday night for Twenty One Pilots, who arrived fresh and rested ahead of moving on to Australia later this week.

Tyler Joseph informed a rapt audience this at the start of the night and invited everyone to provide an energy the Australian crowd would find hard to beat, and by and large the crowd did their best to provide that.

Nailing this to the wall right now, the band's 2015 album Blurryface came out at a very specific time in my life and is one of my most played albums. It is also almost 10 years old, so I was aware that I was not going to be hearing it start to finish at the concert. The band opened with Overcompensate the lead single from the album Clancy they are currently touring, and while I may not be word perfect on it, the rest of the audience was, and filled in the blanks for me.

It was clear the crowd was very engaged and hanging on to Joseph's every word from the get-go. Overcompensate was followed by Holding on to You from the 2013 album Vessel, and I am word perfect on that song, so it wasn't hard to join in with the rest of the crowd.

What followed was a quite long set, comprised of songs from across the discography from Next Semester, Lavish and Paladin Strait to Car Radio, Guns for Hands and Trees. Old or new fan, you were fed and happy.

A highlight for me was when Joseph and his bandmate Josh Dun made their way into the crowd, each on a small stage on separate sides of the pit, and performed a quick medley of Addict With a Pen, Migraine, Forest and Fall Away, followed by Mulberry Street, which is not my favourite from their discography, but the way Joseph instructed the audience to get their phones out on the beat has converted me.

Further on in the show we also got an appearance from a small child in the crowd, who sang along for part of Ride.

Having made my earlier statement about Blurryface I am yet to mention anything from that album. We had The Judge, which opened with a cute video of fans assembled earlier in the day outside Spark Arena, HeavyDirtySoul and of course Tear in My Heart. Stressed Out was part of the encore set.

It should be clear now this isn't my first Twenty One Pilots gig. It's probably my third or fourth. I have a drumstick I caught in the middle of the pit at one of their earlier shows at my house.

As I remarked to my companion on the walk out of the arena, it was a typical performance for the duo, lots of flashing lights, plenty of time off stage and a very instructional show. Instructional is not a word I would often use to describe concerts, but it's apt here. For multiple songs Joseph told us what to do, get our lights out on this syllable, move your hands this way, sing this part of the song. It was probably part of the reason everyone was so into it. We weren't being performed at, we were part of the whole thing.

The encore took place in the middle of the audience with Dun and Joseph on portable sets in the crowd. Other bands may have worried about this risk, but the pair were comfortable and smashed it, finishing and quickly running on stage to say goodbye, before the crowd dissipated into the night, two hours and fifteen minutes after the band initially took the stage.