U.S. rockers Imagine Dragons have recently announced they will be touring Australia in 2015, a report from The Sydney Morning Herald confirms. The band will be in the country from September to promote their second album , Smoke + Mirrors , which debuted at the No.1 spot when it was launched in the U.S., UK, and Canada. The tour was also announced on the band’s official Twitter page.
p.s. AUSTRALIA / NEW ZEALAND TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED!!! Details at http://t.co/Jfh7uKGgo3
— Imagine Dragons (@Imaginedragons) March 16, 2015
Imagine Dragons – who hail from Las Vegas – have said they are very excited to be touring Australia, specifically filling out arenas.
“We’re always psyched to get on tour…To have the time – ample time, actually, this time – to plan it and to get the theme of… Smoke + Mirrors really embedded in the tour, that’s exciting for us.”
Band frontman, Dan Reynolds, said it makes a nice change of pace to the more hectic tour schedule they experienced after the release of their début album, Night Visions , which hit the shelves in 2012. He said that for the first album, “Everything happened so fast we never got a plan. It was like, ‘Fly here, throw up some lights, get on stage,’ y’know? This, we’ve actually been able to lay it all out.”
The dates for their Australian tour are as follows:
Wednesday, September 2 Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne
Friday, September 4 Qantas Credit Union Arena, Sydney
Saturday, September 5 Riverstage – Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Brisbane
Tuesday, September 8 Vector Arena, Aukland
Thursday, September 10 Horncastle Arena, Christchurch
According to Music Feeds , Imagine Dragons went on a two-year tour to promote their first album – which has sold more than seven million units worldwide. They last played in Australia in 2013 where they sold out many venues; a rare feat for a band that, at the time, had only released one album.
Smoke + Mirrors was released on February 17, 2015 and at the time of writing, has sold more than 195,000 units.
Imagine Dragons formed in Nevada, Las Vegas in 2008 after Reynolds and drummer Andrew Tolman met at Brigham Young University. The band recorded three EPs between 2010 and 2011 before being signed to Interscope Records. Bassist Ben McKee remembers the old days.
“We were playing the little clubs, the little tiny stages tucked into the corner by the cigar bars in the cheap, horrible casinos in Vegas…We had to play in a way where we would get people to notice us amongst all of the slot machines and the wheels where you can win a million dollars, and the bikini Blackjack dealers and all that stuff. We had to be bigger than that even playing the small stages.”
This newly-announced Australian tour could well elevate Imagine Dragons to a much higher rock star status than they’re already at.
[Image courtesy of Music Feeds ]