By Ashton York

If the band Twenty One Pilots sounds familiar to you, that probably means you had an emo phase in middle school. However, the band from Ohio still has a large following, myself included. 

Twenty One Pilots consists of two members. Tyler Joseph is the singer and songwriter, and he plays a variety of instruments including bass, piano and ukulele. Josh Dun is the drummer and only occasionally branches out from percussion. 

When Twenty One Pilots’ fourth album, “Blurryface,” hit the stores on May 17, 2015, the band started an ongoing story that continues today. Exactly nine years after the release of “Blurryface,” a new album called “Clancy” will hit music stores and streaming services.

“Clancy” will be the seventh album from Twenty One Pilots, and it will wrap up a massive storyline that casual listeners don’t pick up on. Once the new album comes out, the band will have a total of four concept albums that all connect, and Joseph confirmed that this will be the end of the story. 

“There will be an explanation and a book end,” Joseph said in an interview for Apple Music. “One more record for the story that I’ve been telling. I think then, truly, moving onto another story. No one wants to listen to, or read or watch a story that doesn’t end.”

To summarize a story that has taken nine years to near completion, the band posted a video to social media called “I Am Clancy.” This was the first time that the story has been addressed in a straightforward manner, as opposed to fans piecing together lyrics and clues from secret websites. 

The story begins with “Blurryface,” which is not only the name of an album but also the name of a character. It was quickly obvious during the “Blurryface” era that the character was meant to represent Joseph’s anxiety and insecurities, as he was portrayed as an “alter ego” of Joseph in lyrics and music videos.

Once the next album, “Trench,” released in 2018, fans started to realize that the story was much larger than that. 

Suddenly Twenty One Pilots introduced an entire world to fans, consisting of many characters and locations. Joseph’s role in the story was a citizen of a city called Dema. 

Dema represents depression and mental illness, and much of the imagery and lyrics in “Trench” are metaphors for struggles that people face in real life. 

Dema is led by people called bishops, who wear red cloaks and keep people from escaping their city. Blurryface was one of the bishops, and he often chased down Joseph’s character when he attempted to escape the city. 

In the story, the bishops also practice a religion called Vialism, which is essentially a cult that tells the citizens of Dema that death is the ultimate goal of life. Therefore, the entire storyline is a metaphor about suicide awareness and depression without saying everything upfront. 

Joseph’s character repeatedly proves to others in Dema that death is not the only escape, for he escapes the walls of Dema and reaches Trench, a large ravine that stretches across most of the island that the story takes place on. 

However, Joseph gets captured by Blurryface at the end of the “Trench” era, starting the “Scaled and Icy” era and a new chapter in the story. 

The general public did not like the album “Scaled and Icy” nearly as much as Twenty One Pilots’ previous works. As opposed to the 3 million streams that “Blurryface” gets daily on Spotify, “Scaled and Icy” only gets around 724,000, according to Kworb.

“Scaled and Icy” was released May 21, 2021, with an accompanying livestream later that day. 

Because this album was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Twenty One Pilots Livestream Experience” gave fans the experience of live music without actually being there. “Scaled and Icy” also became the first Twenty One Pilots album not created specifically for live performance.

“I’ve always wanted to try and write a record that didn’t let that live side of it be a factor in the creation process,” Joseph said in an interview with Billboard. “And I thought this would be the record for that. What better opportunity, with live music never being so far away and you just don’t know when or if you’ll play those songs live?”

The livestream consisted of a live stage performance with changing sets and yet another story to focus on. The story introduced more characters and showed that Dema was forcing Joseph’s character to create “Scaled and Icy” and perform it for other citizens and trick them into thinking Dema could be trusted.

“Scaled and Icy” was a more pop-sounding album, with lighthearted instrumentals and some happy lyrics. The final two songs on the album, however, take a darker and more self-aware turn, allowing for fans to theorize that the next album would sound considerably less like a pop album. 

February 15, 2024, a new era began as fans quickly noticed the previous album covers had been edited on streaming services, now displaying red tape over a section of the covers. Billboards with a new Twenty One Pilots logo were also seen in different countries, bordered by the word “Clancy” repeatedly.

On February 22, Twenty One Pilots posted the “I Am Clancy” video for those who had not been invested in the story so far. The video recaps Clancy’s previous escapes and ends with Joseph saying he is “returning to Trench” and “I am Clancy.”

Exactly one week later, the single for the new album, “Overcompensate,” came out February 29 with an accompanying music video. One day after its release, “Overcompensate” was the No. 3 global debut song on Spotify, and the radio edit was No. 10, according to Spotify charts.

The album “Clancy” will be out May 17, 2024, and will feature 13 songs, starting with “Overcompensate.” Twenty One Pilots has yet to announce a tour, but dates are likely to come out around the time of the album release, as that is what the band has done in the past.