The wait is over

BY: GRACE S.

Photography: Fair Use

Trench, the widely anticipated fifth album from Columbus’s own Twenty One Pilots, was released worldwide on Friday, October 5, 2018. With alternative and rock influences on the sound, Trench has a versatile and unique style where each song is different. Fans of the band, referred to as the Skeleton Clique, have waited patiently for a new album for almost three and a half years. Like the father who waited for his prodigal son to return, the Clique welcomes this new album with open arms. It contains fourteen tracks, ten of which were unreleased prior to the album coming out.

With the album having come out so recently, the members of the band, Tyler Joseph (lyrics and vocals) and Josh Dun (percussion), have not yet fully commented on what their intentions for the lyrics were. Fan speculation and analysis are the main drive behind theories circling the internet.

One of the most controversial songs on the album, “Neon Gravestones”, takes aim at the romanticization of suicide and self harm in our culture. One poignant lyric is, “We glorify those even more when they..”. Joseph’s singing cuts off and there is a moment of pause. This could be interpreted as an example of how fleeting people’s lives are or it could be Joseph trying not to directly say the word “suicide” because he understands what a delicate matter this song is dealing with. When a young person takes their own life, they are celebrated once they are gone. Joseph is trying to convey that people should be celebrated when they are still alive, not as an afterthought when they are no longer on the earth.

Joseph has shown his aptitude for writing ill-sounding love songs with Tear in My Heart, written about his wife, on the album prior to Trench. Track 6, “Smithereens”, is another unconventional love song in which Joseph professes his love for wife. He addresses the fact that he doesn’t care whether or not listeners think the he is “selling out” by putting a song about his wife on the record, and states “You know I had to do one on the record for her like this” three times. He is willing to “step to a dude” much bigger than him, “get messed up”, and “get beat to smithereens” all for his wife.

My favorite song on the album is track 3, “Morph”. With snazzy vibes and honest lyrics, this song is close to the heart of many fans. In the song, Joseph sings about his “defense mechanism mode” of morphing into someone else that people will like, instead of being himself. Joseph asks deep questions in his music in the hopes that people will start asking them themselves and that he strives to answer. One of the most notable questions asked on Trench is: “For if and when we go above, the question still remains/Are we still in love and is it possible we feel the same?” He poses these questions that he spends the rest of the album and album cycle answering.

Trench is a multifaceted musical piece of art that has quenched the thirst for so many who have waited years for new music from the band. It requires the listener to thoroughly dig through the lyrics to understand the message Joseph and Dun are trying to convey. While that is important, one of the assets that makes Twenty One Pilots’ music so great is the ability to create a personalized meaning for each one of the songs. These fourteen tracks hold a special and different meaning to every single person who listens. Joseph sings, “I created this world to feel some control”. Now it is up to those who need this music to take his world and make it their own.