Who has the best fans? Twenty One Pilots, obviously.

They're dedicated, passionate, emotional, and tattooed - and the best support a band could ask for.

They were there in the front rows, wearing their homemade jackets, showing off their band tattoos, their piercings and their coloured haircuts, smiling and singing every word, tears often streaming down their cheeks as they did so.

They were just as passionate down the back, holding their arms aloft, hugging their friends and dancing to their favourite songs. That’s where you could find parents jumping with their kids, many probably attending their very first rock show.

Fights like at the Travis Scott show? It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. At Twenty One Pilots’ Spark Arena show on Sunday night, there was far too much love in the air.

For proof the Columbus duo has the best fans, you needed only to watch the mid-set video filmed earlier that day outside Spark Arena. There, diehards who call themselves the “Skeleton Clique” queued far earlier than they needed to. They rocked the merch: beanies, toys and scarves. One cradled a very new baby.

Then they addressed the reason they were there, why they’d showed up so early, and were willing to hang out for so long. “This band means so much to everyone here,” said one. “There’s this sense of community … there’s so many great people here,” said another. They swayed together while singing the hook for ‘The Judge’ in unison.

Then the video cut and Tyler Joseph, the smiling Twenty One Pilots front man who seems happier on this tour than any of the others, took over, picking up right where they left off, kicking off another mass singalong with those exact same fans.

Tyler Joseph, with his fans. Photo: Chris Schulz.

It has been a year in which artists have wanted to get right in amongst it.

At Queens of the Stone Age’s impeccable Auckland show, Josh Homme swaggered his way through the crowd, preaching to the converted, then singling out a fan and telling him: “I love you, man.”

At The Streets’ rowdy Powerstation show, Mike Skinner crowdsurfed to the back of the venue like as if he was being anointed then staggered through the crowd like it was 3am in a basement club and he needed to find a toilet.

Even at Friday night’s cheese fondue of a Coldplay show, Chris Martin and co spent several songs down the back of Eden Park on a tiny stage playing to fans who otherwise would have needed binoculars to truly see what was happening.

That isn’t necessary at a Twenty One Pilots show.

That’s because Joseph and drummer Josh Dun take the show to their fans. Just a few songs into their set, the pair headed down the aisles to separate stages on the sides of the moshpit, performing several songs with fans crowded around them, pointing at them, singling them out, celebrating right there with them.

In amongst it: Tyler Joseph at Spark Arena. Photo: Chris Schulz.

They’ve done this here, and pulled some of the same tricks, many times before.

Last night was Twenty One Pilots’ fifth visit to Aotearoa and third performance at Spark Arena. I’ve been at all the Spark shows for one simple reason: I have children. In 2017, it was my son’s very first show, and in 2018, we did it all again. Last night, my daughter joined our ritual, having a very late night but loving it all the same.

That’s because they put on a perfect rock show for kids. Joseph pulls a disappearing act, evaporating from the stage then reappearing in the stands seconds later. Dun backflips off the piano and floats above the moshpit on a hovering drum kit.

But there were stark differences too. Thanks to their recent album Clancy, there’s a darker industrial streak, with ‘Overcompensate’ and ‘Backslide’ adding drama and intensity to a set otherwise laden with a seemingly endless array of singalongs: ‘Ride,’ ‘Stressed Out,’ and ‘Mulberry Street’.

You won’t hear a huge amount of swearing. You won’t see much aggression. Twenty One Pilots are crowdpleasers in every sense of the word. Joseph and Dun high-five their fans often, head to their mini-stages often to play with them, and even let one of their youngest converts sing ‘Ride’ with them.

Then they took it all a step further. For the finale, the pair did something I’ve never seen before. They cleared the moshpit. They wheeled in their instruments. Then they invited their fans back in, engulfing them for a finale of ‘Trees’ that included steam machines, confetti cannons and water flying off the drums they kept pounding.

Twenty One Pilots get amongst their fans. Photo: Chris Schulz

Fans held those drum kits up, supporting Joseph and Dun as they did this. Then, with the show over, they parted so the pair could return safely to the stage. Many bands couldn’t do that. They wouldn’t even attempt it. Their fans would be too unruly, too irresponsible, too demanding.

When you’re dealing with a crowd full of superchill Twenty One Pilots fans, anything, it seems, is possible.

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