The stage lights, blurred by a violet fog, were still. The voices inside the Goldstein Auditorium dimmed to a murmur. The crowd was waiting.

Soon, there was a thump of a drum, a jostling of bodies and the lights burst alive with the flare of a white strobe. A skeleton-masked figure paced out of the shade. With three sharp strides, he crossed the stage, leapt onto the piano and launched off.

This was frontman Tyler Joseph’s entrance to the band’s first number, “Ode to Sleep,” at the Twenty One Pilots concert on Thursday. The show, which also featured rapper Travi$ Scott and up-and-coming alt-rock band Shiffley, was co-hosted by the Traditions Commission and University Union as a part of Orange Central.

Twenty One Pilots, a duo made up of Joseph on vocals and keyboard and Josh Dun on drums, had just flown in from Columbus, Ohio. This was their first of four shows, having just finished a month of performances across the country with Fall Out Boy. The band will head out again later this month for more, and starting in January, they’re set to play in Australia and Europe.

“We’ve been traveling a lot longer than I ever thought we were,” Dun said in the Jabberwocky Café lounge.

Joseph, slouched halfway down the armchair beside Dun, added they had been traveling so much he doesn’t “even know where the years start and stop.”

But once on stage that night, Twenty One Pilots was all vigor. They propelled around the stage. They smashed at their instruments. They improvised covers. They donned ski masks and skirts. At one point, Dun back-flipped off of the piano over Joseph’s crouched body.

Kelly Benini, UU’s director of concerts and a senior in the Bandier Program, said one of the driving factors for bringing Twenty One Pilots to Syracuse University was their performance power. Benini also said Twenty One Pilots made a nice change in genre for this year’s concert lineup.

“We thought it was really unique to have an alternative-rock duo. It’s something we haven’t done in a while,” she said.

Shiffley, a bouncy young alt-rock band from Greenlawn, N.Y., opened the show. They won their spot on the lineup through a contest held by UU and Syracuse radio station WERW to book an SU band. The contest, announced two weeks before the show, was judged by a combination of talent and social media pull. The band found out they won on the Monday before the show.

“We’ve been building up a nice fan base amongst our friends and extending [the band] more. They all really pitched in,” said frontman Alex Ganes, a junior music composition major.

The performance fell in seamlessly with the headliners. Ganes got the crowd clapping to his exuberant guitar grooves, while surprises like a trombone and a lively cover of Zedd’s “Clarity” kept them dancing.

Travi$ Scott, a rapper who collaborates with Kanye West and T.I., also helped open the show. He stormed the stage with an energy that fit with Twenty One Pilots’ upcoming performance.

“This is a no bystander show!” he called out to the crowd before dropping into songs like “Uptown.” The center of the auditorium was packed with fans, jolting and jumping to the beat. Despite issues like a microphone cutting out during the second song, Scott was content after the set.

“It was great,” he said backstage. This was only Scott’s second college performance, though he’s been touring for the last year.

Though the first two acts were well received by an enthusiastic crowd, the stars of the night were Twenty One Pilots. They crashed, they thumped and they caused a thrilling ruckus.

The highlight of the night was the show’s final moment. After a preface that there would be no encores, Joseph told the crowd to make a circle whenever he instructed them to do so. And in the middle of “Guns for Hands,” he gave the command. Joseph and Dun carried drums down off the stage and banged at them until the song came to a ripping halt.

“The one thing that we’ve learned about college shows is that it’s truly unpredictable; you just never know [what’s going to happen],” Joseph said. “The college scene is where bands thrive.”

Published on October 6, 2013 at 10:06 pm

Contact Gabriela: ggriccar@syr.edu