Welcome back to Trench: Unpacking twenty one pilots’ new album Breach

On twenty one pilots’ heavily-anticipated eighth album Breach – out today, September 12 – the Columbus, Ohio superstars wrap up the lore they began a decade ago with 2015’s Blurryface, expanding on the world with 2018’s Trench and taking a sideways foray with 2021’s deceptively upbeat Scaled and Icy. The dystopian narrative centres on a fictional city called Dema, run by nine Bishops (one being the titular Blurryface, also known as Nico) while at the same time tackling powerful themes including mental health and the pressures of the music industry.

Last year’s Clancy saw the eponymous protagonist (vocalist Tyler Joseph) lead the rebel group Banditos against the Bishops. The album ends with Clancy confronting Nico, leaving things on a tantalising cliffhanger – which is right where things pick up. Here’s what Breach reveals, but be warned: there are big spoilers ahead…

Opening track City Walls puts us firmly inside twenty one pilots’ fictional world. Tyler sings, ‘From the mainland to the island of violence,’ referring to the continent of Trench, where Dema is located, and the island of Voldsøy. Clancy escaped to Voldsøy in the music video for Scaled And Icy’s The Outside before returning to Trench at the beginning of Clancy, making City Walls a parallel to Clancy opener Overcompensate. Voldsøy and Trench are separated by a body of water called the Paladin Strait, which was also the name of the closing track on Clancy.

Along with making his singing debut on Drum Show, which was released as a single earlier this year, a voice note from Josh plays at the end of One Way. “I’m not opposed to One Way going into [next album track] Days Lie Dormant, but it does feel like quite a vibe change…” he admits, which is an understatement. Straight after the more laid-back One Way, Days Lie Dormant feels like a brilliantly jarring burst of sunny instrumentation.

Center Mass samples a fan saying, “Girl, I really don’t think you should take that…” from a viral clip of a fan stealing one of twenty one pilots’ drums after a tour stop in Manchester earlier this year. (The drum was fairly quickly recovered.) Fittingly, Center Mass features a prominent beat from Josh and that sampled line is immediately followed by Tyler saying Josh’s full name, an Easter egg hidden once per album. See also: The Judge and Morph.

The City Walls video picks up where the videos for The Contract and Paladin Strait left off, but it also calls back to the videos for Heavydirtysoul, Jumpsuit and Levitate. Towards the end of the song, Tyler sings ‘Entertain my faith’ – a beloved line from Holding On To You, which pre-dates the Dema narrative and will absolutely give you goosebumps.

twenty one pilots recorded The Line for the second season of Netflix animated series Arcane in 2024 (and the track was immortalised in this incredible performance). In it, Tyler sings, ‘Did I disappoint you? / Will they still let me over / If I cross the line?’ It parallels the lyrics ‘Should we cut the line?’ and ‘You want to love me, I’ll let you down’ on Breach track Tally. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but a tally is made up of lines. Clever!)

Breach has several meanings, referring to the Banditos infiltrating Dema on City Walls, and betrayal, as Tyler sings, ‘I breached your trust’ on Tally. These lines could be interpreted as Clancy singing to the Torchbearer (Josh) or Tyler talking about his fears of disappointing the fans – and might be a nod to the fact that previous album Clancy was initially teased as the end of the story. “I think that we felt that we had done a misdirection to the fans,” Tyler told Zane Lowe on New Music Daily. “We never like to pull the rug out from under them, so intentionally knowing that we wanted to name the following record Breach was this play on, we breached their trust a bit, in a way that actually ties into the story that we’re telling as well.”

After twenty one pilots revealed the Dark Clancy and Nova Bishop album editions, fans began to speculate that the story might culminate in Clancy becoming one of the Bishops. Tyler explains on RAWFEAR, ‘You’ve met my fears / They’re all regulars / Wait, who’s the new kid?’ alluding to an additional Bishop, since Blurryface was supposed to represent Tyler’s fears and insecurities. In the City Walls video, after confronting and defeating Blurryface, Clancy puts on a red robe, like the Bishops wore. He offers the Bishops’ robes to the Banditos but the Torchbearer refuses, an inversion of Breach’s album artwork, where the Torchbearer is holding Clancy’s jacket out to him.

“That’s not Clancy up there anymore,” the Torchbearer says at the end of the City Walls video. “He’s out there somewhere and we will try again.” It’s a nod to another Vessel track, Truce (‘The sun will rise and we will try again’). Tyler echoes this sentiment on the closing track Intentions, declaring that, ‘I am starting it all over once again,’ over the reversed melodies of Truce.

Towards the end of the City Walls video, the intro to Heavydirtysoul can be heard – going back to the beginning of Blurryface and starting the cycle again. Across these past five albums, it’s been clear that Clancy’s fight against Nico has not been an easy one, involving multiple escape attempts from Dema. This could be interpreted as showing how working through mental health challenges takes a lot of effort, and setbacks are to be expected. But the album ends with the simple, poignant line ‘Just try to be’ – an encouragement that persisting is the key.

Read this next:

• twenty one pilots: “It’s full-circle. This was the first time I felt okay coming back to where we started”
  
• “I would rather die than fake a song”: Inside the revolutionary success of twenty one pilots’ Blurryface
• Trench: The story of twenty one pilots’ most ambitious album ever