They seem both humble and completely unstoppable. In the language of smartphone app development, Imagine Dragons were 'born global', ready to be played from Seattle to Sydney. It's an impressive, almost overwhelming synthesis of commercial influences, including, in their monster hit Radioactive, some rather mannered dubstep wubs. On Cha-Ching (Till We Grow Older), they even lift the vocal hook from Beyonce's Crazy in Love. They have successfully assimilated the hushed American gothic of Arcade Fire, the democratising hoedown of Mumford & Sons, and the polite triumphalism of Coldplay. On the swooping, self-dramatising Hear Me, they out-Killer the Killers, who turn out to be just one of the bands on the Imagine Dragons hitlist. Alongside him is an enormous bass drum that he rattles and thumps in a Stompesque bit of stage theatre.

Fist aloft, he conducts a singalong and co-ordinated mosh to Tiptoe, a slice of driving powerpop studded with retro synth stabs that practically drip neon. For singer Dan Reynolds – a strapping, good-vibes dude with a scraggy haircut – it is clearly vindication.

Now they're performing in front of teeming crowds that can sing back huge chunks of their debut album, Night Visions. The other is that 'Imagine Dragons' is really a pseudonym, an anagram of their 'real' name, known only to the band and their kin.įive months ago, they were playing UK shoeboxes. One is that the Las Vegas four-piece paid their dues by playing six-hour sets to uninterested gamblers in crummy casinos, like the Beatles in Hamburg but with less flattering lighting. T here are two key plot points to the Imagine Dragons origin story.

Imagine dragons album review