A masked Tyler Joseph sings from the roof of a blazing Cadillac, as the air is filled with gold confetti. He then plummets backwards into the darkness, before instantly rematerialising in the circle halfway down the arena, tugging off his balaclava to reveal we’ve been watching a body double. Twist!

Having ascended to three-nights-at-Wembley status, the US duo Twenty One Pilots rise to the occasion. The David Blaine-worthy illusioneering is merely an opening gambit. Joseph keeps his young audience rapt by stuffing the two-hour show with set pieces and distractions, including, but not limited to: multiple costume changes; performances on lighting rigs suspended above the audience; a drummer who can’t stop revealing his taut torso; and a bizarre interlude where roadies, dressed in gas masks and Clockwork Orange-style white boiler suits, discharge fire extinguishers into the audience.

Throughout, the crowd-pleasing, piano-vaulting frontman performs like Freddie Mercury, with added parkour skills. But can Twenty One Pilots’ music match the showmanship and high production values? Joseph is a prodigiously talented songwriter. His wayward muse spins a proprietary hybrid that grabs influences from hook-studded mainstream pop, earnest, froggy-throated indie, and the hyper-melodic histrionics of Linkin Park: a polymorphic spree switching from piano balladry to rapping like Eminem’s softer little brother, to white-boy pop-reggae mutations that, against all the odds, aren’t entirely risible. You sense he could add pretty much anything to the stew – thrash, polka, musique concrète – and his fans wouldn’t protest, so long as the drummer was still occasionally topless.

This is a band with a penchant for concept albums dealing with faith and depression, and the subtleties of Joseph’s lyrics are obscured by the shock and awe of the Twenty One Pilots live experience. But the message isn’t lost on the faithful, who sing along with every word, and wave signs reading: “This is my 21st Twenty One Pilots show” and “You saved my life.” For everyone else, Joseph’s unerring gift for irresistible hooks and a stage show that would turn PT Barnum green are more than enough.

• At SSE Arena, London, 8-9 March. At Reading festival, 24 August.