Ashton Irwin | 5 Seconds of Summer's engine
Ashton Irwin drums for 5 Seconds of Summer and plays a mirror chrome Gretsch the size of a small car. His playing, his kit, and where to start.
Pop bands do not usually have drummers with concert toms and a gong drum.
5 Seconds of Summer do, because Ashton Irwin came up on rock records and never saw a reason to shrink the kit just because the songs got to number one.
Here is a drummer who plays arena pop with a metal drummer’s setup and a punk drummer’s arms.
Who is Ashton Irwin?
Ashton Fletcher Irwin was born on 7 July 1994 in Hornsby, New South Wales, Australia.
He joined 5 Seconds of Summer in 2011, when the band were a group of Sydney teenagers posting covers on YouTube. He was the oldest member and, by most accounts, the one who pushed hardest to make it a real band rather than a channel.
It worked. 5SOS went from YouTube to supporting One Direction to headlining arenas, with four number-one albums in the US — the first Australian act to manage that.
The records
5 Seconds of Summer (2014), Sounds Good Feels Good (2015), Youngblood (2018), CALM (2020) and 5SOS5 (2022).
He has also released solo material — Superbloom (2020) — which is much heavier and stranger than the day job, and on which he plays most of the instruments.
Drumeo’s voters gave him Pop Drummer Of The Year in 2023.
What Ashton Irwin actually does
He plays pop songs like rock songs. The parts are bigger, louder and more physical than the arrangements strictly require, and that is why 5SOS sound like a band rather than a production.
He hits genuinely hard. Full-arm strokes, high stick lift, a lot of visible commitment. It is a large part of the live show.
His tom fills carry the choruses. With that many drums in front of him, the fills are melodic — descending runs across five or six voices rather than a snare-and-crash.
He plays for the crowd. Arena drumming is partly a visual job, and he understands that a stick twirl at the right moment is worth as much as a paradiddle.
He is a real songwriter. He writes with the band and on his own, and Superbloom is proof he is not just the guy at the back.
Ashton Irwin’s drum kit
This is one of the biggest kits in mainstream pop, and it is worth listing in full.
- Drums — Gretsch USA Custom, in a mirror chrome finish. An 18”x22” bass drum, 7”x10”, 8”x12” and 9”x13” rack toms, 16”x16” and 16”x18” floor toms, 12”x8” and 16”x8” concert toms, and a 16”x20” gong drum.
- Snare — a Gretsch USA Custom 14”x6.5”.
- Cymbals — Zildjian, largely dark: 13” K hi-hats, an 18” K Dark Crash Medium Thin, a 20” K Dark Crash Thin, a 10” K Splash, a 9” K Custom Hybrid Splash and a 19” K China, plus a 16” A Custom EFX and a 21” A Ultra Hammered China for the trashy accents.
- Sticks — Vater.
- Heads — Remo.
Every era, with buy links, is on Ashton Irwin’s Rig Vault page.
Want the sound without the rig?
Nobody needs nine drums. Two of his ideas are genuinely worth stealing on a four-piece.
Add a gong drum. A single-headed 20” drum with no snares and no reso head gives you one enormous low boom for a chorus drop, and it does something no tom can. Our floor snare drums guide covers the related idea of an extra low voice.
Then buy a dark crash and a trashy one. His whole cymbal setup is built on contrast — dark K crashes for the musical accents and EFX or hammered chinas for the noise. Our cymbal buying guide covers the difference, and the Gear Guru will price up a kit that can do both.
And hit harder. Free, and the biggest single difference between his sound and yours.
Where to start listening
- “Youngblood” (2018). The one everybody knows, and much more physical than the chart position suggests.
- “Want You Back” (2018). Tom fills doing the heavy lifting.
- Superbloom (2020). His solo record — heavy, loud, and largely him.
- Any live footage from a 2023 tour. The kit in full, and the reason it exists.
Final thoughts
It would be very easy to file Irwin as a pop drummer, and easy to be wrong. He plays a rock kit, hits like a rock drummer, and writes heavier music than his band makes — and the reason 5SOS translate to a live room as well as they do is largely him.
There are worse ambitions for a drummer than “make the songs sound bigger live than they do on record”. He does that every night.
See Ashton Irwin’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Josh Dun — another drummer holding a stadium together in a band with no guitars to hide behind.