Imagine Dragons to play biggest Las Vegas show yet

Imagine going over every word in your diary with a co-worker.

Think of putting each emotion under a microscope, so that your innermost thoughts and feelings could be examined down to the molecular level.

And then, explain it all in exacting detail, diagram the hurt, take all that private pain and make it public.

That’s kind of what it was like for Dan Reynolds.

Only the Imagine Dragons frontman’s songs are his journal entries — and he’s been writing them daily since he was 12 years old.

“I have a hard time expressing myself without melody,” he explains. “For some reason, when there’s a soundscape and melody involved I’m able to say things that I can’t express otherwise.”

For the band’s new double album, “Mercury: Acts 1 &2,” it enlisted super-producer Rick Rubin, who’s overseen classic records ranging from Slayer to the Beastie Boys to Johnny Cash, and who took a decidedly different approach to songwriting than Reynolds had ever experienced.

“It was the first time I ever had to sit down with a producer and go over every lyric,” he says. “But Rick really insisted on it. And that was really hard for me because, one, it’s Rick Rubin, and two, it’s painstaking to sit down with someone and go through every word that you wrote and have them question it, and the meaning behind it, and have to explain it. It’s just really vulnerable.”

This vulnerability lies at the (often-broken) heart of “Mercury,” which was written during a particularly traumatic stretch for Reynolds, in which his best friend from childhood, an ex-girlfriend, his sister-in-law and his business manager of 10 years all passed away.

“It was just like one after another,” the 35-year-old Reynolds says. “Loss was a very prevalent theme. Looking through and understanding the immediacy of loss and what that feels like and sounds like. I think there was a lot to learn for myself.”

‘It’s OK to be out of your mind’

“Tell me, how am I supposed to move on?” he wonders in a voice as fragile as his sense of well-being.

Above all else, Reynolds most doggedly pursues the answer to that question on “Mercury.”

There’s a thread of regret through the albums, feelings of guilt about not being there for loved ones in their time of need.

“Where was I? / When he took his life / Oh, I was singing in the prime of my life,” Reynolds emotes about his childhood friend on the stirring “Waves.”

“I wish that I would’ve been there in the end / I wish I was a better friend,” he confesses on the swollen-hearted ballad “I Wish,” delivering one of his most powerful vocal performances on a song about his sister-in-law.

There are moments of self-doubt, which often morph into self-laceration (“I don’t want this body, I don’t want this voice / I don’t wanna be here”; “A sharpened blade of reality / Sometimes, I wanna hurt me.”)

But there’s also a sense of resolve amid it all, of finding a way to make it through the storm, soaking wet, but with spirit intact.

“Breathe in deep, just a day at a time,” Reynolds instructs on “It’s OK.” “’Cause it’s OK to be out of your mind.”

Sonically, the band follows Reynolds’ lead, shining through the darkness, with guitarist Wayne Sermon delivering some of his most impassioned, expressive soloing, bassist Ben McKee serving as the driving force behind some of the album’s most assertive rhythms, and drummer Daniel Platzman bringing the thunder all over the record.

“There’s some holes that you can never fill — certainly when you lose someone — it leaves a big emptiness inside your heart,” Reynolds acknowledges. “But going through a grieving process, it’s really important to communicate what you’re feeling to someone, whether it’s a therapist or a friend or whatever. For me, it was through music, and through this record. That was kind of my therapist.”

‘Life is just perspective’

“It’s time to begin, isn’t it?” he sang a decade ago.

And then it began — breathlessly.

Nearly 10 years ago to the day that Imagine Dragons are headlining Allegiant Stadium on Saturday, the band released its 2012 debut, “Night Visions,” which became a worldwide smash, selling over 7 millions copies, launched by the aptly titled first single “It’s Time to Begin.”

Success was not an overnight thing for this band — the group self-released four EPs from 2008 to 2011— nor was it something that Reynolds could fully get his head around at first.

“The funny thing is, I constantly questioned it — and so did my mom, like, ‘Maybe, it’s going to be done tomorrow; I’d better really love it today,’” he recalls. “I remember even when our first single got played on the radio thinking, ‘This is amazing: I got to hear a song I wrote on the radio — I heard it on Mix 94.1-FM, actually — and then thinking, ‘OK, but I may never hear it again, so really enjoy this moment.’

“And that was a narrative for a long time for me,” he continues, “thinking, ‘Now we’re selling out clubs. This is crazy, but it may never happen again. It might be a fleeting thing.’ I think there’s something about that that continues to drive me, to want to be better, to work harder, to give everything on every single show, so if it was the last show, at least I gave it. To this day, it’s like, ‘OK, our first time doing stadiums, this might be the last time.’ ”

And so, being truly alive in the moment is what “Mercury” — and by extension, this band — is really all about.

“Yeah, life is just perspective / Laughing when you’ve wrecked it / Smiling when you kept it together / You weathered the storm,” Reynolds observes on “Symphony,” singing those clouds away.

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram.