Trench, a metaphor for our demons

 

          For my first blog article I’m going to talk about twenty one pilots’ upcoming album, Trench. First of all, who are twenty one pilots? Also called 21p or TØP, twenty one pilots is an American rap band which current members are the singer Tyler Joseph and his best friend, the drummer Joshua Dun. Even if you don’t listen to them, you probably know their two most famous songs, stressed out and heathens (main music of the movie “suicide squad”). They’ve created through trench, their next album, a fictional universe that represents what people that try to “escape” depression and anxieties go through and the obstacles they have to overcome.

July 6^th 2017, TØP posted a series of 7 pictures on their twitter without any context. The pictures were backward quotes from 7 of their songs over what looked like a closing eye. The same day, they officially announced their hiatus. From that day on, the only public apparition of one of the members was during the APMA where Joshua accepted the most dedicated fanbase award. He said “Tyler wishes he could be here, he’s actually off severing ties with Dema”. Then again, no context.

The band remained silent until April 2018: their vessel merchandise presentation video was updated with a link: http://dmaorg.info/clancy.html . This link led to a 404 error and a message left by Clancy. 

“404 ER_ROR

 you are in violation. thEy mustn't know you were here. no one should ever find out About this. you can never tell anyone about thiS -- for The sake of the others' survIval, you muSt keep this silent. we mUst keeP silent. no one can know. no one can know. no o ne c an kn ow_

(Violation Code. 15398642_14)”

            Then, until 11^th of July, the website showed images and letters from “Clancy”. One of them was a map of Dema.

          This map and the letters explain Dema to be a jail controlled by nine “bishops”. To understand the meaning of that map, we need to connect it with twenty one pilots’ last album: blurryface. The cover of that album is very similar with the center of the map: nine circles, each one representing one of its songs. Each bishop name is found in one of those songs’ lyrics, like “keons” for “choke on smoke” in heavydirtysoul and “sacarver” for “she’s a carver” in Tear in my heart.

           The only one that doesn’t connect with lyrics is “Nico”, who is one of the most important characters in Clancy’s letters, we can connect it with “stressed out”. This song is the first one where blurryface’s name is said. Blurryface is a character that represents in its eponymous album the embodiment of the singer’s demons and anxieties. He sometimes interferes in the music videos in the form of Tyler with red eyes. If you've heard stressed out, you know the line "my name's blurryface and I care what you think".

           

   We can understand that Nico and the bishops are, like blurryface, the embodiment of people’s anxieties and demons; Dema if we use a Greek plural.

            July 9^th and 10^th, TØP posted their first tweets in a year, they were clips of an eye with footages of their upcoming singles “Nico and the niners”-which obviously refers to the nine bishops- and “Jumpsuit”. They‘ve then uploaded on YouTube the music videos for these songs.
          

Tweets:

pic.twitter.com/7pNGoAWA2b

pic.twitter.com/QNiQleoI6O

            I don’t think I could clearly explain the meaning of the songs and videos in this article so here are two videos that explain better than me the meaning of this whole album.

 

            https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3roRV3JHZzYrywUGDSoIeF7J9P4sWIba is the link leading to the singles that already came out if you want to listen to them. The entire album will come out October 5^th.