TWENTY ONE PILOTS Pittsburgh PA 9/18/25 (A Parent's Perspective) Show Review

The Pop Punk Dad
11 minutes ago
5 min read

Twenty One Pilots to me is one of those bands that no matter who you are, you can find yourself in love with at least one of their songs. From the casual listener who knows of Blurry Face by listening to the radio, or the comic book movie enthusiast who caught Heathens at the end of the Suicide Squad movie, all the way to the opposite end of that spectrum with the fan who’s been there since the Vessels record and goes hard into the deep dive into the mythos and lore of the band with its own open world, characters, and more.

Breach, Twenty One Pilots newest album is the next deep dive into the lore, further exploring the characters, the continent of Trench, and more. With the September 2025 drop of this new album, diehard fans have been frantically scrambling to unlock the meaning of songs, while the casual listener can just enjoy the music at its surface.

September 28th, 2025. Twenty One Pilots and opening act Dayglow are set to play one of the closing shows of the season for the outdoor venue The Pavilion at Starlake in Burgettstown PA, the outskirts of Pittsburgh PA.

Dayglow kicked off the show as the only opener that night. The band, fronted by Sloan Struble, powers through nearly a dozen tracks.

Dayglow has that indie rock meets rock sound with a pop and at times hiphop vibe to them which perfectly encapsulated that early Twenty One Pilots sound, especially during the Vessels era, so it made sense why they fit the bill as an opener.

They blasted through track Ricochet, from their newest 2025 album Self-Esteem while playing a whole lot of songs from their 2019 album Fuzzybrain, like Hot Rod, False Direction, Listerine and even closing out the set with track Hot Rod!!!. One of my favorite tracks they played was Change Song which was actually off of the Minecraft Movie soundtrack.

After a crazy intermission and set up, Twenty One Pilots were ready to hit the stage.

I knew I was in for a show when there was only one opener, meaning that there was going to be a lot of Pilots music. The set was over two-hours long and is one of the sickest shows I’ve been to.

The band kicked off with track Overcompensate, off their 2024 Clancy record into tracks The Contract and RAWFEAR, both new songs from their latest Breach album.

With Tyler jumping all over the stage and Josh planted behind his drum set, each song is action packed, not knowing what’s going to happen next. Like tracks We Don’t Believe What’s On TV, which started with a video intro of fans singing the song to the impromptu murder or lantern flys by Tyler, who made a comment about how horrible the traffic was coming into the show during track Tear in My Heart.

I forget how many songs I actually know by this band. I’m not the super hardcore lore fan, and not the casual listener, I’m somewhere in between. But I still would catch myself singing along to songs that completely forgot that I ever knew, like tracks Backslide, and Next Semester with big pops from the crowd during the track Heathans.

There was four parts to the entire night, with track Routines in the Night closing out part one of four.

The next part came with the band disappearing into the crowd and reappearing in the lawn area of concert way in the back of the pavilion. With Josh popping up on drums, a car was set on fire next to his drum set, yes it was part of the show, as Tyler walked through the crowd kicking off the second “act”, with track Message Man.

With the second act and the car blazing, the band played through tracks Pet Cheetah, and Polarize before ending with track Chlorine as Tyler made his way back through the crowd on stage.

Tyler and Josh both have such an incredible way of commanding an audience. Simply by moving their arms they can part a crowd like Moses parting the seas, to having the crowd hold them up as they play drums on their heads, it’s an exciting thing to watch. Fans love to feel like they’re part of the show, and Twenty One Pilots definitely makes the music and show one in itself.

A backtrack over the PA known as the Torchbearer’s Theme played as the Josh and Tyler made their way back to the stage, kicking straight into track Jumpsuit, the first track of “Act 3” of the night.

With the reveal of “Dema” the lore/mythos city on stage, this is where I feel that Act 3 was more of a set for the diehard fans, playing deep cut tracks and lore heavy songs like Heavydirtysoul, Tally, Garbage and The Line while also playing a fan favorite Ride, where during the song, a fan sang the last chorus of the song. Then closing out the set with track Drum Show off of the new album.

This is what most would consider the encore at this point, but in this situation it’s Act 4 of the night.

In between Drum Show and the encore, fans sang the lyrics to the song Downstairs in the crowd, a nod to more of the lore of the band.

Opening with another instrumental, Paladin Straight, the band kicked back into song City Walls, before playing a shortened version of Guns For Hands. Twenty One Pilots closed out the night with track Stressed Out before ending with track Trees, a closer they’ve used for years now.

During Trees, the band plays bass drums flipped on their side in the crowd, while the crowd holds both them and the drums as confetti canons blast the pavilion. Twenty One Pilots exited the stage with track Lavish over the PA.

Twenty One Pilots are such a high energy performance from the first note played all the way until the confetti canons at the end of the encore. They aren’t just a band, they’re a performance, poetry and art in motion from start to finish. Armed with just two members in their band, the freedom to do whatever is entirely up to the creative imagination of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun. Twenty One Pilots is a band that I would want to see live every time they come through, and could easily find myself falling down the rabbit hole of their lore in the future.

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