PROVO, Utah -- From their first show in Provo to winning a Grammy award, Imagine Dragons is "On top of the World." Wednesday, the rock band sat down to talk about their new album “Smoke + Mirrors.”
The band will be playing in Provo Saturday at Velour Live Music Gallery, click here for more information on the band’s tour.
The alternative rock band with Utah ties followed up their multi-platinum debut album Tuesday with “Smoke +Mirrors.”
"We are constantly writing on the road and on our laptops like just making things, emailing them back and forth and then we kind of get a collection of these demos that way,” Drummer Daniel Platzman said. “And then when it's time to step into the studio and make the record, then we have to have the really difficult conversation of figuring out which of those hundred demos are we going to start building up and tearing down and working on."
The band was awarded a Grammy in 2014 for Best Rock Performance. Their song “Radioactive” brought home the prize.
"The first album, it was made in a pretty short amount of time and we just kind of threw it out there,” Lead guitarist Wayne Sermon said. “We didn't know what it would do. We really had no expectations."
After performing the same songs live for nearly three years, the guys are excited about the new material.
"We created this thing that we're so proud of, and we really enjoy everything we created,” Bass player Ben McKee said.
Lead singer Dan Reynolds said the album features variety.
"There are parts of it that are very heavy,” he said. “There are parts of it that are very introspective. There's parts that kind of go into grounds that we have never been to as a band."
Band members said they're not feeling any pressure to replicate the success of their first album.
"We all told each other, no matter what we're just going to put on best songs and write the best music we could,” Reynolds said. “We weren't going to try to create some super left-of-center statement album or replicate 'Night Visions.' We just, whatever it was we just wanted to let it be that."
The band is on tour this year, and on Saturday they will be playing at Velour in Provo. The band is also playing Monday in Las Vegas. Visit the band’s tour page for the dates and times of their upcoming shows.
