Twenty One Pilots Take Crowd Surfing To New Heights at Reading Festival

As previously reported in The Inquisitr, Ohio duo Twenty One Pilots are one of rock music’s hottest tickets at present. With their mix of hip-hop and alternative rock and a growing reputation for their outlandish and exciting live performances, Twenty One Pilots are scaling hitherto undreamed of heights. Back in May of this year, Twenty One Pilots embarked on their biggest tour to date, a massive 112-date odyssey across the world. This past weekend saw Twenty One Pilots bring their spellbinding show to Reading and Leeds festivals, a twin city event that is now one of the world’s top festival destinations.

Twenty One Pilots may not have played the main stage at Reading festival. They played the BBC Radio 1 tent where they were the primary support for hip-hop super group Jack U, a collaboration between Skrillex and Diplo. To understand the scale of Reading Festival, you need to know that the BBC Radio 1 stage is in a “big-top” that can accommodate around 20,000 music fans. Twenty One Pilots were pitched up against Disclosure and Foals on the main stage and Maximo Park and Pulled Apart By Horses elsewhere on the festivals nine stages.

As a result the BBC Radio 1 stage was not quite at capacity when Twenty One Pilots took the stage for a performance that everyone who attended the festival will claim to have seen in years to come. The simple fact is that enough drama was crammed into Twenty One Pilots 50-minute set to make this a show that will become part of Twenty One Pilots folklore.

The show began in exciting fashion with fierce backlighting that presented Twenty One Pilots as ghostly silhouettes in front of a huge graphics screen. As Twenty One Pilots launched into “HeavyDirtySoul,” it was clear that fans were about to undergo a concert experience quite unlike anything they have seen before.

As reported by NME Twenty One Pilots whipped thousands of fans into a frenzy as singer Tyler Joseph climbed into a giant transparent “Zorbing” ball to continue performing whilst held aloft by the crowd. Not to be outdone, drummer Josh Dun thrilled the crowd as he performed backflips on stage. Dun then showed Twenty One Pilots fans that they are willing to go to almost any lengths to make their shows exciting for fans.

Dun decided to join in the crowd-surfing fun, but in true Twenty One Pilots style he did so with style and in a way that few will ever have witnessed. Dun loaded part of his drum kit onto a large plinth and went crowd surfing whilst still playing his drums and without missing a beat.

At the close of their 50-minute, 11-song set, Tyler Joseph once more went into the crowd and crowd surfed all the way to the giant pillars supporting the huge tent.

It cannot be denied that fans went berserk. As Joseph travelled through the hands of excited fans, he lost a shoe and his ski mask, his shirt was torn, and at one stage he was dropped by the crowd. Doubtless this proved a frightening experience for Joseph, but it seems that some Twenty One Pilots fans believed that he was “attacked” by fans. As a result some outlets, including Get Reading are reporting that Tyler was attacked by fans.

Anyone who has attempted crowd surfing at a major rock show will know it can be a dangerous and painful experience. Ripped shirts and lost shoes are nothing unusual. Some claim that Twenty One Pilots brought their show to a premature close as a result of Tyler’s experience. This was not the case; Reading Festival runs like clockwork, sets run exactly to time, and only the mainstage headliners are able to deliver an encore.

Twenty One Pilots played for their allotted 50-minutes, but the show did end in bizarre fashion with Joseph climbing to the top of a plinth in the middle of the crowd to announce that Twenty One Pilots’ show was over.

Whilst Twenty One Pilots have been around since 2009, they are now hitting the heights that will surely see them scale the heights to superstardom. Billboard reported yesterday that Twenty One Pilots have made history by becoming the first act to top both the pop chart and the alternative chart at the same time.

Alternative Press reported that Twenty One Pilots track “Heathens” from the Suicide Squad soundtrack has won the Best Music Video Award at this years VMA’s, but bizarrely MTV did not make the announcement during Sundays awards show.

There can be no doubt that Twenty One Pilots are taking the world by storm; their live shows are becoming legendary. Fans of Twenty One Pilots already know that the band give fans an experience that they will never forget. Twenty One Pilots are already a music industry phenomena. Who would bet against Twenty One Pilots topping the bill at major music festivals across the world in years to come?

[Photographs by Alan Ewart, Inquisitr]