Trench (album)
Trench is the fifth studio album by the American musical duo Twenty One Pilots, released on October 5, 2018, through Fueled by Ramen and Elektra Records. It was the band's first studio album in three years, after the breakthrough success of their previous studio album, Blurryface. Recorded in secret during a year-long public silence, it is a concept album which explores mental health, suicide, and doubt, themes prominently featured in the band's previous works, framed in the metaphorical city of Dema and the surrounding continent known as "Trench". The album was also the first release of the newly revived Elektra Music Group.
The album was preceded by the release of four singles. The first two, "Jumpsuit" and "Nico and the Niners", were both released on July 11, 2018. The third single, "Levitate", was released on August 8, 2018. The fourth single, "My Blood", was released on August 27, 2018. Two follow-up singles, "Chlorine" and "The Hype", were released on January 22 and July 16, 2019, respectively. To promote the album, the band embarked on the Bandito Tour, which began at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee on October 16, 2018, and concluded at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois on December 13, 2019.
Trench received acclaim from critics, who praised its ambition, songwriting and cohesive production; many contrasted it favorably with Blurryface. Several publications placed the record on their year-end lists of 2018, with Rock Sound naming it the best album of the year. It was also a commercial success, reaching number one in six countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the Netherlands, and number two in several countries, notably the United Kingdom and United States.
Background and production
Twenty One Pilots released their fourth studio album, Blurryface, on May 17, 2015. The album topped the Billboard 200 and produced two top five singles, "Stressed Out" and "Ride", peaking at number two and number five, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. Those songs, along with the single "Heathens" from the Suicide Squad soundtrack, launched the band into mainstream success in 2016. The duo embarked on two concert tours in support of the album from 2015 to 2017. In an interview with Alternative Press, the band stated that they would be "going dark" in order to focus on new music, and added that they would focus on the lyrical content and bring back the "authenticity, lyrics, delivery, and fearlessness of songwriting" of their self-titled debut album. Following the five final dates of the band's tour, "Tour De Columbus", the duo entered a year-long break from public appearances beginning on July 6, 2017, in order to rest and work on their next project.File:Mutemath 11.jpg|thumb|left|Paul Meany, singer and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Mutemath, co-wrote and co-produced much of the project alongside frontman Tyler Joseph.The conceptual world of "Trench" was created before the songs from the album had been written, departing from the band's regular songwriting process where they would create the album song by song. It is unclear when production of Trench began; however, lead singer Tyler Joseph was working on the track "Bandito" as early as 2015, during the Blurryface Tour. Joseph produced the album's fourteen tracks within his private home studio, while Josh Dun's drum tracks were recorded at United Recording Studios. Mutemath frontman and keyboardist Paul Meany co-produced and co-wrote much of the project, following his previous collaboration with Twenty One Pilots for the TOPxMM remix EP and on the Emotional Roadshow World Tour. Adam Hawkins mixed the album. The album's "drop dead due date to get ahead of production and distribution" was August 15, 2018, less than two months before the release of the album.
No one other than Joseph, Dun, and Meany were involved in the songwriting process for the album in order to eliminate any effect a family member, friend or colleague could have on the final form of the record's content through their comments. In an interview with Kerrang!, Joseph explained that he only showed these people the album when it was finished so that their reaction would be "as close to their true reaction as possible." In a later interview with The New York Times, he recounted how the project "almost destroyed" him, leading him to consider ending all work on it, as his emotional state "whiplashed" between self-deprecation and self-confidence.
Concept and music
Trench continues the band's exploration of themes surrounding insecurity, faith, suicide, and mental health, prominent themes on Twenty One Pilots' previous albums. The album was formed around the conceptual world of "Trench", created by Joseph and represented through the album's accompanying marketing and music videos.Much of the album and its marketing material discusses the city of "Dema", a fictional location set within Trench that draws its name from dakhma, or "Tower of Silence", in Zoroastrianism. In that religion, Towers of Silence were used to dispose of dead bodies by having vultures eat the corpses. The band explained on Reddit that they were inspired by the "sad and intriguing concept of a dying religion... the reason it was dying was something they could never control: The lack of the vultures needed to carry out their theology. Something so natural and logistical can get in the way of your religion."
Trenchs city, Dema, is ruled by nine "bishops", whose names are Nico, Andre, Lisden, Keons, Reisdro, Sacarver, Nills, Vetomo, and Listo. The chief bishop, Nico, was revealed by Joseph to be Blurryface, the personification of his insecurities from their previous album of the same name. Other characters involved are part of a group who call themselves the "Banditos", whose aim is to liberate the people of Dema. They adopt the color yellow, specifically 0xFCE300, which the bishops are unable to see, instead seeing it as grey.
The album, like Twenty One Pilots' previous records, contains many different genres of music, including alternative rock, rap rock, electropop. pop rock, R&B, trip hop, and reggae. It opens with the alternative and hard rock song containing progressive rock and nu metal hooks, "Jumpsuit". Lyrically it is about dealing with Joseph's insecurities. It was described by Rolling Stone as having "distorted bass guitar, crisp drumming and dark washes of synth" with Joseph's vocals building from "a near-whisper to a full-throated scream, to an atmospheric falsetto." The song's outro merges into the next track, "Levitate", a minimalist rap rock track. "Morph" is a fusion of jazz, rock, rap, and reggae. It explores the themes of life after death and references the leading bishop, Nico. The song has been compared to artists such as Khalid, the Prodigy, Beck and DJ Shadow. The following track, "My Blood", is an indie pop and rock song about remaining loyal to a friend. The track has been compared to songs such as Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" and Portugal. The Man's "Feel It Still" due to the song's chorus featuring a falsetto sung by Joseph. "Chlorine" is a song about “cleansing your mind from dark thoughts.” "Smithereens" is a "cute and playful" song about Joseph's love for his wife, Jenna, whom he married in 2015.
The next song, "Neon Gravestones", is a "slow-burning" rap song building over a piano riff with electronic percussion being added as the song progresses. Lyrically, the track explores suicide and its glorification by the media and ends with a plea to admire those who have gone through life, not those who have chosen an earlier grave. "The Hype" is an alternative rock chant-along with a ukulele bridge. In an interview with Coup de Main Magazine, Joseph says the song is about the difference between internal and external pressure. The next track, "Nico and the Niners", is a song fusing reggae, rap, rock and psychedelia that is about resisting the "bishops", a theme found in "Doubt", a song from the previous album, denouncing their religion, "Vialism", and leaving Dema. "Cut My Lip" is about the willingness to persevere even when times are hard, and also discusses Joseph's struggle between staying true to himself and giving into the demands of the music industry.
The following track, "Bandito", is a piano-heavy ballad with mysterious minimal electronics that sees the protagonist accepting his role as part of the Banditos, a group of rebels. It contains the lyric "Sahlo Folina", which is an anagram that, when unscrambled, reads "all Ohio fans". The track has been compared to the work of Alt-J. "Pet Cheetah" is a song that blends the rap, techno and rock genres and is a metaphor for the songwriting process and writer's block. "Legend" is a tribute to Joseph's grandfather, Robert, who died on March 17, 2018. He was featured on the right-hand side of the album cover for the band's 2013 label-debut release, Vessel. The final track, "Leave the City", features slightly restrained vocals, a strong piano segment, and light drumming. The song is about losing faith, reflecting Joseph's struggles with his Christian beliefs. It does not build up to a complete crescendo and intentionally leaves the song feeling slightly incomplete. Joseph explains this as representing the concept that "Trench" is a journey between one place and whatever comes next, which mirrors how mental illness is an ongoing struggle that one needs to keep working at.
The narrative and characters of the album were expanded upon in Scaled and Icy and Clancy, and concluded with Breach.
Release and promotion
Twenty One Pilots first mentioned Dema, the fictional city created by the band, during the 2017 Alternative Press Music Awards when they won the award for Most Dedicated Fanbase. Josh Dun collected the award alone and apologized for Tyler Joseph's absence, mentioning that Joseph was "severing ties with Dema", hinting that he was working on an ongoing project. On April 21, 2018, fans discovered the URL dmaorg.info hidden in a GIF on the band's webstore. This site consisted of a series of cryptic teasers centered around Dema.The website also contained many journal entries from Clancy, a fictional character and the protagonist in the band's conceptual world. The journal was about his escape from Dema, with entries periodically added over time. On July 6, following a journal entry promising that "by morning, everything will be different", the band sent an e-mail containing a GIF of a slightly opened eye to fans who subscribed to their newsletter. The band returned to social media on July 9, 2018, with a video of a more opened yellow eye. Billboards and murals emblazoned with the band's new logo were put up in numerous cities around the world overnight. The next day, the band posted another video of the eye, more open than before, with a muffled version of the intro to "Jumpsuit" playing. The song, as well as a second single, "Nico and the Niners" were eventually released on July 11. The same day, the band announced the title of the album as Trench and revealed its release date. The track list for the album was revealed the next month.
Upon the end of the band's hiatus, Josh Dun was interviewed by Hanuman Welch of Beats 1 about the album's writing process and the band's two new singles. On September 5, 2018, Zane Lowe, also of Beats 1, hosted an interview with band member Tyler Joseph in his home studio in Columbus, Ohio, to speak about the band's year-long hiatus, the album, and how it reflected his struggles with insecurity, spirituality, and mental health.
On September 14, 2018, Twenty One Pilots announced on Twitter that they would be releasing a yellow colored vinyl LP exclusive to their online store. They also announced that they would be releasing 15,000 copies of the LP in olive green through Indie Retail and 8,000 copies of the LP in olive green and yellow on the Urban Outfitters website. It was announced that the band would appear in various record stores across the United Kingdom during the European leg of the Bandito Tour.
On October 2, 2018, several copies of the album were accidentally sold in a record store in Australia and the record was subsequently illegally leaked. Josh Dun hosted a livestream on Instagram with Tyler Joseph the following day to promote the album and addressed this leak. The album was released at midnight two days later, accompanied by a music video for "My Blood". The album was also the first release of the newly revived Elektra Music Group. The band uploaded a spoof poster of the 2018 film A Star Is Born on their Twitter account, replacing Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga with themselves in a bid to defeat the film's soundtrack album in terms of sales. In December 2018, the band partnered with music streaming service Spotify to create an immersive video experience exploring the world of "Trench", which also revealed the meaning of the five symbols featured on the album cover underneath the track listing.
On June 21, 2019, the duo launched their Location Sessions series, which features live renditions of tracks from Trench. The first track to be released was an acoustic version of "Chlorine", named "Chlorine ", with the coordinates following the song title pointing to a square in Mexico City. A reworked live performance of "Cut My Lip" was released on July 11 as the second song shared from the series.
Ahead of the album's release, the band was featured on the cover of Rock Sound magazine's September issue, Alternative Press magazine's September issue, and Kerrang! magazine's October issue, all containing an interview with the band and exclusive photographs. Following the album's release, Caryn Ganz, writing for The New York Times, interviewed Joseph and Dun about the band's history and the album's creation.