BWW Reviews: X Marks the Spot for Twenty One Pilots Return to Columbus

By PAUL BATTERSON

Clearly things weren't going well for Twenty One Pilots drummer Josh Dun and frontman Tyler Joseph. Performing in front of a sold-out crowd in their hometown of Columbus, the band sounded ragged and unrehearsed as the capacity crowd dwindled down to five people by the second song.

That was the nightmare Dun kept having in the weeks leading up to the duo's April 26 show at the Lifestyles Community Pavilion. Midway through the band's high energy show, Dun looked around the sea of faces and smiled. "Well it's past the second song and you're all still here," he said. "I guess that's a good sign."

The concert turned out to be a night Joseph and Dun will never forget rather than a nightmare Dun envisioned. Midway through a rollicking 16-song set, the two stopped the concert to have tattoos of an X applied to Joseph's arm and Dun's neck on stage to mark the occasion.

"Usually I know just what to say," said Joseph, with a state of Ohio flag drapped around his shoulders. "Tonight I am at a loss for words. This X is dedicated to you guys. Columbus, Ohio is where we're from and it will always be where we are from. Whenever someone asks what that X means, I am going to say this is for all of you."

Musically, Twenty Pilots was all over the place. The duo calls their music "schizoid pop," a cocktail of rap, pop, and of course, ukulele soloes. Joseph proved to be pretty good on the Hawaiian instrument on SCREEN and HOUSE OF GOLD.

Physically, the band was also all over the place. The tattoo session was one of the few lulls during the hour and a half show. The rest of the time Joseph and Dun were a flurry of motion. Joseph opened the show by jumping about nine feet in the air off a upright piano. The rest of the evening, he sang on top of a 10-feet mountain of speakers, on the roof of the LC Pavilion and used a steel girder as a balance as he tight-roped his way to another perch to sing.

Clearly the band knows, loves and ultimately trusts its audience. In 30 years of going to concerts, I've only seen one artist (Peter Gabriel in 1983) jump from the stage and body surf through the crowd. Joseph did that on the opening number, GUNS FOR HANDS. During KITCHEN SINK, he donned a ski-mask, ripped off his shirt, and crowd surfed his way to the back of the mosh pit. Once he found his feet, he and Dun roared their way through the single TAXI CAB. Late stagehands set a makeshift float of a drum kit on top of the outstretched hands of the mosh pit and Dun flailed his way through a portion of SEMIAUTOMATIC.

Dun and Joseph weren't the only surfing the crowd at the LC. Fans started body surfing during the before Twenty One Pilots took the stage and didn't stop until the end of the show. Warm-up acts Five Knives and New Politics worked up the crowds into frenzy before the Pilots cleared the runway. Security guards had their hands full as well over 40 fans were hoisted on top of the crowd before being deposited near the front of the stage.

"I used to work here and I've seen a lot of shows here," Joseph told the crowd. "I wasn't strong enough to be one of the guards catching you guys but I worked here checking IDs. I want this to be a night I remember forever."

And thanks to the tattoos, it was a night the band won't be able to forget it.

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