Imagine Dragons thunders through Wichita. Frontman: ‘I love the people of Kansas’

Apparently no one thought to tell Imagine Dragons it was a Monday night in Wichita.

The Las Vegas-based modern rock group brought the thunder for a packed house of 12,000 at Intrust Bank Arena on Monday night.

There were probably as many families at Intrust Bank Arena as there were 20-somethings.

Imagine Dragons has been touring as part of its Evolve World Tour for 10 straight months and clearly had almost every element of the performance fine-tuned and polished many shows ago.

From the beginning, the show was a sensory experience — with multicolored LED lights often flashing from the stage. That, in addition to smoke effects, pyrotechnics and confetti cannons periodically shooting out over the crowd, made for a very stimulating concert.

The band, which has churned out a series of mega-hits for the better part of the last decade, delivered an electrifying performance Monday night.

Its frontman, Dan Reynolds, quickly acknowledged the crowd near the start of the show.

Reynolds, who is a Mormon, referenced the time he had spent as an LDS missionary in Phillipsburg, Kan., and small towns in Nebraska.

“I love the people of Kansas,” he told the crowd. “Wichita — this is a small town that’s big, but it has a small-town feeling to me, and I treasure that.

“There’s a lot that I love about the Midwest.”

Reynolds was pristine and energetic as a vocalist, consistently belting soaring anthem after soaring anthem.

It was an arena rock show if there ever was one — Reynolds himself performed sans shirt for the entirety of the concert.

The band played nearly its entire catalog of hit singles, then retreated to an acoustic B-stage at the rear of the arena for three songs — a nice treat for audience members in the cheap seats.

Near the end of the set, Reynolds descended from the acoustic stage and worked his way through the crowd, posing for photos and giving a young fan a hug (all midsong, mind you). At one point, he climbed on top of the loge box sets to belt the chorus of “I Bet My Life.”

Reynolds, who has made headlines lately for his LGBTQ advocacy, made a plea toward the end of the show against the “stigmatization ... in our society about depression and anxiety,” encouraging people to talk about their struggles.

“There is a light ahead — it gets better,” he told the crowd. “Your life is always worth living.”

This story was originally published July 30, 2018 at 10:06 PM.