Don't call 5 Seconds of Summer a boy band 

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In mid-July, 5 Seconds of Summer began a three-month U.S. tour of large outdoor amphitheaters and arenas like the venues it played when the Australian group opened for One Direction on that group\'s "Take Me Home" tour in 2013.

This summer\'s tour of the big stages is a considerably different experience than the 2013 outing.

"It was really scary for us," guitarist Michael Clifford says about the first shows with One Direction during a recent phone interview. "When we started that tour in 2013, no one knew who we were. We kind of had to build that by getting better and better and better live.

"It was kind of all we cared about for a long time was just how we could become a better live band, play better and have the audience interact more and stuff like that. But coming back to like this year now, we see how many shows we played on that One D tour and how much it helped us to like craft our performance into what we wanted it to be."

Two years later, a lot of people — particularly teen fans — know 5 Seconds of Summer. The group\'s 2014 self-titled album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard magazine\'s album chart in July 2014 with first-week sales of 259,000 copies — the biggest first-week total for any CD since Daughtry\'s self-titled album in 2006.

The album produced two singles that cracked the top 20 on Billboard\'s all-genre Hot 100 chart. The group followed up the debut album with a concert CD, "LIVESOS." A second studio album is planned for release this year, and the group has released the first single from the album, "She\'s Kinda Hot."

It\'s been a quick ascension for the group that was formed by Clifford, Luke Hemmings (vocals, guitar), Calum Hood (bass) and Ashton Irwin (drums) in Sydney, Australia, in 2011 while they were students at the same school.

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The group began its career by posting videos to Hemmings\' YouTube channel of the band covering popular tunes. One such video, of 5 Seconds of Summer doing Chris Brown\'s "Next To You," generated more than 600,000 hits. By summer 2012, the group had a publishing deal with Sony/ATV and its first single, "Gotta Get Out," in the top five on Australia\'s iTunes chart.

It was around that time that Louis Tomlinson of One Direction posted a link on his Twitter account to the YouTube video of the acoustic version of "Gotta Get Out," saying he\'d been a fan of 5 Seconds of Summer for awhile.

Then came the offer to tour with One Direction in 2013. It was a huge opportunity, obviously, but accepting the tour presented one problem for 5 Seconds of Summer.

The group considers itself a punk-pop band in the tradition of bands like Green Day and Blink-182, but aligning itself with One Direction was sure to get 5 Seconds of Summer labeled a boy-band/teen-pop group.

"I think we had our moments of doubt in thinking about that," Clifford says. "But honestly, we\'d be so stupid not to take that [One Direction tour] up because I never thought we would be playing in venues bigger than like 1,500 in Australia. By doing that, it really opened up, the platform it gave us was just like huge.

"Bands we like, like Blink and Green Day and Sum 41 and stuff like that, I\'m sure if they had the opportunity to [open for an act like One Direction], like someone said to them you can either be forced to play for a rock crowd forever on a smaller scale or you can play to like more of a pop crowd all over the world, I\'m sure they\'d all say yes as well," he says.

The 2013 One Direction tour put 5 Seconds of Summer on the pop music map worldwide, and by the end of the year, the group was signed by Capitol Records.

In April 2014, 5 Seconds of Summer released its first major label EP, "She Looks So Perfect," and saw it debut at No. 2 on the Billboard magazine album chart. The EP was released to coincide with the start of another extensive tour with One Direction. This time, 5 Seconds of Summer opened One Direction\'s eight-month world tour of stadiums.

The group\'s self-titled debut album was released in July, just before the One Direction tour arrived in North America.

By year\'s end, 5 Seconds of Summer had released the "LIVESOS" album and was setting its sights on this summer\'s arena tour and a second studio album.

Clifford says the group hopes the second album will solidify the notion that 5 Seconds of Summer is a genuine rock group and not a boy band. The four band members have made it a stated goal to bring rock music back to commercial pop radio.

"With the [first] album, we were really easing into a new type of rock or a new type of pop-rock," Clifford says. "I mean, this next album is already coming together. It\'s a lot punchier than the last album. It\'s going to be a bit of a, not like a curveball, but it\'s going to surprise some people with what we\'re doing … Now we\'re kind of going to keep pushing the bar as far as we can. I think that\'s what we always wanted to do, like bring guitars back to radio."

At the same time, Clifford says 5 Seconds of Summer has tried to craft its music to appeal to pop radio — and not just the narrower rock audience. In particular, the group wanted to appeal to the teen girl audience it had gained on the One Direction tours.

5 Seconds of Summer has more of an edge to its music than the typical boy band. But songs like "Don\'t Stop," "She Looks So Perfect," "18" and "End Up Here" aren\'t frenetic enough to be called punk, and the group has built in enough sing-along parts and sugar-sweet hooks to make its music work alongside the slick, heavily synthetic songs that now dominate Top 40 radio.

"Yeah, I think we wrote music and made music for, just for more of an accessible audience," Clifford says. "We made sure it was always like catchy and singable and stuff. But it always had that little bit of a difference. It wasn\'t the same crap that everyone is doing now. And I think this new album is pushing it to its very limits of what pop-rock music can actually do nowadays."

While 5 Seconds of Summer has done several short headlining tours in the states playing smaller venues (and played an arena show in Los Angeles in December), this summer\'s amphitheater tour is a whole different proposition. But Clifford says the group is comfortable with headlining.

"It\'s kind of been like a massive thing for us to get to this point," he says. "I mean, playing an arena tour is kind of in, you dream of s--- like that. When we played the Forum in L.A. in December, that was kind of like a lead-up to this [tour]. It was kind of like a practice show for us. But we\'ve kind of built on that and made it an even better show now. Yeah, it\'s turning out great."

•7:30 p.m. Saturday Aug. 29, Hersheypark Stadium. $24.40-$64.40. ticketmaster.com

•7:30 p.m. Sunday Aug. 30, PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, N.J. $29.50-$69.50. www.livenation.com

•7:30 p.m. Sept. 4, Susquehanna Bank Center, Camden. $25-$79.50. ticketmaster.com