“You cannot put a ceiling on your dreams, you guys, and we are living proof,” are the words, spoken by singer/songwriter of alternative rock/indie pop band Twenty One Pilots, Tyler Joseph, that marked the beginning of the bands’ hiatus. Joseph and the bands drummer, Josh Dun, took time away from releasing or posting anything at all. This came as a surprise to their fans, considering the duo had just won a Grammy for their 2017 album Blurryface, and were finishing an immensely successful world tour. But luckily for their millions of dedicated listeners, after about a year, the band returned with a bang, releasing chart topping single “Jumpsuit”, leaving fans everywhere headbanging. On October fifth, Twenty One Pilots released their long awaited album, Trench.

Much like “Jumpsuit”, song “Pet Cheetah” stood out to listeners as showing the hard rock and rap side of band’s music style. Although the album has multiple songs in this realm of genre, even “Levitate”, an exclusively rap number, has a deep and intense meaning that not everyone will fully understand. Don’t worry though, if rock and headbangers aren’t really your thing, Trench has something for everyone. You can listen to their more slow and sad songs, such as “Leave the City”, a song about finding a safe space, or “Neon Gravestones”, a beautiful, nearly spoken word song discussing suicide and mental health stigma. Or you could always go for a more upbeat approach, listening to songs such as “The Hype” or “Smithereens”, both of which will leave you helplessly smiling and dancing in your seat.

Although Trench has a large variety of song genres, that’s not the only way songwriter Tyler Joseph explores music style in the album. The duo loves to change genre mid song. For example, “Chlorine”  is a soft rock/pop song, but after the first two thirds of the number, it quickly transitions into a tear-jerking ballad to the fans, afterwards transitioning back to a bop-worthy pop song. This is much like song “Bandito”, which starts off as a soft melancholy song, but with a slow build, transitions suddenly into a 90’s psychedelic kind of vibe. In a Spotify interview for 2016 album Vessel, Joseph says about song “Car Radio”, “And when I was done with it and was showing other people, that’s when I realized it’s a very unnatural song...but it just worked for me, so that’s kinda why I stuck to it.” Tyler and Josh very much enjoy exploring different structures and genres within singular songs, which, I think, is what makes a lot of their more unique numbers as compelling as they are.

Although we’ve established that Tyler Joseph is endlessly talented, we can’t forget about the band’s other half, Josh Dun. Josh is an almost unbelievably gifted drummer, the backbone of the band. Although he’s admitted to being stage-shy and he doesn’t talk much at shows, it would be a crime to let him fall into the background. The album as a whole focuses largely on mental health and anxiety, but just because Joseph is the spokesman of these thoughts, it does not mean he’s the only one feeling them. In the band’s 2016 AMA acceptance speech, Dun said “I chose the drums so that I would never have to speak in a microphone in front of people, but here we are now, and I’m so nervous I think I might throw up.” It’s clear that Dun also suffers from his own ‘Blurryface’, AKA demons and anxieties, but he doesn’t let them stop him from being wildly successful in the music industries along with his best friend Tyler.

The 2018 album, Trench is, in my opinion, a truly incredible showcase of the talent possessed by Tyler and Josh. But what’s even more amazing than the album itself is the themes and the representation regarding mental illness. What makes the band truly unique is the way they use their platforms to save lives, and this is exactly what they did with new album. As Tyler Joseph said, “Stay alive. It gets better tomorrow, I promise.”