Alt-rock band twenty one pilots has engaged in trickery with their fanbase. The story that they have been telling for a decade now was supposed to end with their 2024 album, Clancy, but they lied.

  Twenty one pilots has managed to go number one on the Billboard Top 200 list in its first week. They were able to beat out Ed Sheeran. This is because twenty one pilots has always been committed to their fanbase. Rather than trying to appeal to the masses, they work hard for their fans and only their fans. The focus is on maintaining the strongest fanbase in the industry.

  Their new album, Breach, is the true end to the narrative. During their tour for Clancy, the band teased something coming through lore-related letters, with one letter in Morse code at the bottom of each. When fans put the letters together, they spelled “Breach”. After teasing a new song, the band announced that the full-length album would be released on September 12 and the first single for the album, titled “The Contract,” would be released on June 12. 

  The band released two singles for the album, “The Contract” and “Drum Show.” Fans were ecstatic. People loved these sounds and were hyped for the album. Twenty one pilots would go on to release a video on social media containing short snippets of each song on the album.

  Before the album was released, lead singer Tyler Joseph did an interview in which he stated that the music video for the first song on the album, “City Walls”, would wrap up the storyline and that the last song, “Intentions”, would serve as an explanation for the events in the music video. He also said that they had spent 1 million dollars on the music video, most of which was spent on recreating old music videos for it. 

  The music video for “City Walls” premiered on YouTube at midnight along with the rest of the album, and viewership peaked at around 100,000. Somewhat stupidly, I stayed up late to watch it. I was able to experience the end with so many other fans. I won’t spoil what happens in the music video, but all I’ll say is that this entire story is an allegory for mental health and battling depression.

  The rest of the album is a super fun alternative pop-rock album. Songs like “Downstairs”, “Days Lie Dormant”, and “Tally” aren’t too far off from the regular twenty one pilots sound. “Downstairs” is actually a demo from 10-15 years ago that drummer Josh Dun had saved on his computer and wanted to finish. 

  The song “Robot Voices” has a very interesting story about how it got made. Lead singer Tyler Joseph heard a song called “My Soft Spots My Robots” by a very small band called Blanket Approval. Joseph liked the song but wished that one of the bridges in the song was the chorus, so he got in contact with the band and asked if he could mess around with the song. So, he kept the overall melody, rewrote some parts of the song, kept some others, and voila, “Robot Voices” was made. In exchange for this, Joseph got the band in contact with a record label. The sound of the song itself is very reminiscent of the band’s 2021 album Scaled and Icy, as is the song “One Way,” which is a very fun pop song.

  In early listening events for the album, Joseph stated that people would not like the song “Center Mass” because it has too much going on. He said that it would take a few listens to come around to. Not to brag, but I liked it right away (and so did most other people), and Joseph has said that it is his favorite song on the album.

  Another interesting song is the final one, “Intentions.” Many realized this at the listening parties, but the instrumental for this song is that of the song “Truce” from their first studio album, Vessel. This helps to tie the decades-long story together in what it was always meant to be: a cycle.