Imagine Dragons visit the House of Blues March 18 to promote their hit album

Logan Broyles | Downtown News

It seems that breakout rock bands are hard to find these days, with pop and rap music seemingly dominating the last decade of the music business. Thankfully good rock isn’t dead, it’s just a little harder to find.

For the last three years, alternative rock band Imagine Dragons has been building up momentum and finding its way onto both the alternative and rock charts year after year.

Their latest album, “Night Visions,” has drawn praise from music critics and fans alike. These days it’s hard to listen to the radio in San Diego without hearing the record’s hit song, the apocalyptic, and the trance-like “Radioactive.”

“We’ve always believed in our music, but we could never have anticipated the success the album [Night Visions] has had,” said frontman Dan Reynolds. “Nothing is certain in this business, and especially not success. We hope we never take it for granted, because we know how lucky we are. There are so many amazing bands out there who don’t have this opportunity.”

Reynolds is the lead singer and drummer, with Ben McKee on bass, Wayne Shermon on guitar, and Dan Platzmon playing drums, viola, and lending backup vocals. The Group calls Sin City – better known as Las Vegas – home.

The band was founded in 2008 and released their first two EPs, “Imagine Dragons” and “Hell and Silence” in 2010. A third EP, “It’s Time,” was produced before the group signed with Interscope Records in November of 2011.

Their first big break came with the release of “Continued Silence” on Valentine’s Day of last year, with the hit track, “It’s Time” reaching the top five Billboard Alternative and Billboard Rock charts and the song’s music video being nominated for “Best Rock Video” at the 2012 MTV Music Awards.

“On a broader level, things haven’t changed too much for us, we still spend every waking hour writing music, playing music, and talking about music,” noted Reynolds. “That said, we are busier than we’ve probably ever been, which is something we’re grateful for. There just aren’t enough days in the week to get where we need to get and do what we need to do. But we plan on staying as busy as we can for as long as we can, which is all a band can ask for.”

“Night Visions,” released last summer the day after Labor Day, was their first full-length album. Within the first week it had sold 83,000 copies and peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart, giving it the highest ranking for a debut rock album since 2006.

“Our album Night Visions was really a bit of an exploration in itself,” said Reynolds. “Although we definitely had what we think is a cohesive vision and sound as a whole, we tried to push the boundaries as much as we could with the songs.

“We definitely have evolved, and hopefully we never stop,” he said. “We are constantly writing, and were fortunate enough to have a few years together as a band to hone our sound before there was much of a spotlight on us. Those years really allowed us to figure out how to write together.”

The group hasn’t just dominated the music charts either, they’re all over television as well, with performances on “The Tonight Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” “Conan,” and “The Late Show,” plus, a rendition of their song “It’s Time” was recently performed on “Glee.”

Reynolds said the band’s main focus for the next year is performing several tours to help promote Night Visions.

“We’ll be touring for the next year, at least, both here in the U.S. and abroad,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in visiting the other countries where our album is releasing.”

Imagine Dragons will be coming to town March 18.

“San Diego is an awesome city, we love it,” Reynolds stated. “We’ve played the House of Blues before, but this will be our first time headlining it.”

Imagine Dragons will play at the House of Blues, located at 1055 Fifth Avenue Downtown, on Monday, March 18 at 7:30 p.m. For more information or tickets, visit houseofblues.com/venues/clubvenues/sandiego or call 619-299-2583.

Contributing writer Logan Broyles is the former managing editor of Pacific San Diego Magazine and editor-in-chief of Construction Digital magazine. He likes to write about music and news, and can be reached at [email protected].