After the year long hiatus Twenty One Pilots has finally released their new album: Trench. The album consists of fourteen songs: Jumpsuit, Levitate, Morph, My Blood, Chlorine, Smithereens, Neon Gravestones, The Hype, Nico and the Niners, Cut My Lip, Bandito, Pet Cheetah, Legend and Leave the City. The album sports the color yellow and is significantly slower and uses more repetition that their previous albums.
What makes this album so unique is the extensive lore behind it. It began with subtle hints in the their previous album Blurryface and carries on into Trench.
Trench tells the story of Dema, a fictional place that serves as a metaphor for Tyler, the lead singer and songwriter, to explain his troubles, anxiety and depression which is causing his writer’s block and how he’s dealing with it.
Months before the release of the album the duo began spreading clues and hidden messages about Dema. They gave random pieces of information such as journal entries and photos all spread around different websites and on their twitter page providing exposition for this fictional location. Their fan base quickly came together and began making sense it.
Dema is a metaphor for the darkness and struggles in life. Throughout the trilogy released prior to the album accompanied with the music videos it is shown that Dema is a dark place where the residents that live there are controlled by leaders called Bishops. These Bishops follow a made up religion called “Vialism” but it is inferred that it means they create light. The residents in Dema are forced to worship the fake light the Bishops create.
Tyler explains how he is currently in Dema with the first song in the album Jumpsuit. Jumpsuit shows when Tyler is originally captured by the Bishops and taken to Dema. In the song he talks to Blurryface, the collective name for all the Bishops, and tells them that he won’t stop trying to escape until they:
“Grab my throat and lift me in the air” and “tie me down and then break both my hands.”
This means that he won’t stop his fight against his problems as long as he still has his hands and throat to make music.
Now it is made clear that Tyler wants to escape Dema but unfortunately the entire city is being held captive by the Bishops so Tyler then joins the Banditos, a rebel group that also is trying to escape. Banditos are a metaphor for Tylers clique, friends and family that are trying to help him get through his rough situations or in this case Dema.
Now how they are going to escape is explained in “Nico and the Niners” where both the music video and lyrics show that they have to use a trench they dug under the city to escape.
Trench is the journey to escape Dema and within the album he explains what he’s facing.
In “Chlorine” he sings about how songwriting is is both something that keeps him running and stable keeping a more mellow repetitive chorus.
In “Pet Cheetah” he sings about his writer’s block with a faster more aggressive melody.
In “Cut my Lip” he sings about how life is hard and it cuts you but you just have to keep drinking. He keeps the a same slow repetitive melody with almost a reggae feel.
Finally he reaches the end with “Leave the City” where the album sounds like it ends on a sad note explaining how he’s almost getting losing his will to fight and keep on going. The song is slow and never reaches a climax like most Twenty One Pilot songs do but although it feels like he has given up he sings “In time I will leave the city, but for now I will stay alive,” explaining how although he can’t quite leave yet he still has hope and will continue on fighting.
Overall “Trench” is very lyrical and extremely heavy on the metaphors and analogies to the lore and although it is much slower and repetitive than their usual songs it still manages to keep the same feeling of their previous albums.
