On Friday September, 12th Twenty One Pilots released their eighth studio album simply titled Breach. This album is the culmination of all of their previous albums and was marketed as the final chapter in the story that they’ve been telling over the past ten years with their music. It feels like a lofty goal to try to wrap up everything they’ve done thus far so they can move onto new things, but I truly think they did.
From the announcement of this album, things seemed different. Before this Twenty One Pilots tended to release an album in about 3 years starting with Blurryface in 2015, Trench in 2018, Scaled and Icy in 2021, and Clancy in 2024. They had albums before these ones that I enjoy a lot, but Blurryface was the start of the story they told with the rest of their albums. So to release albums in back to back years, was truly something special.
The album opens with a song titled City Walls, with a slow intro like their previous album opener Overcompensate, the way it builds up to the chorus is really cool. Other than that, the vocals are strong, and the lyrics are quite interesting both in how they serve the story they’re telling and how they function on their own. It is a quite strong opener that really sets the vibes for how the rest of the album will go.
This track is followed by something quite different in Rawfear, which samples some crazy sounds during the chorus to build this sense of anxiety in the song. This song is followed by one of my favorites in the album which is Drum Show. Drum Show is one of the two songs on the album released prior to the album coming out, so I’d already listened to it quite a bit. It’s got a great drum beat obviously, and it marks the only time in the band’s history that the Drummer Josh sings as opposed to the primary vocalist Tyler.
Track Four on the album, called Garbage is a fun song that doesn’t overstay its welcome, I wish the full chorus was used more throughout the song though.Track Five is the other song to be released prior to the album, and was released before Drum Show. Titled The Contract is another song that uses anxiety and paranoia to motivate it, and is also quite good.
The Sixth Track on the album is Downstairs, which is by far the most spiritual of the album. While Tyler Joseph, the lead singer is a Christian, the band itself isn’t explicitly Christian, instead using Christian ideas to inform their music. The struggle to find acceptance in his faith, is what makes this song really powerful to me. The Seventh Track is Robot Voices which is a big vibe change, but the lyrics are pretty cool and the song definitely shoots up my personal rankings.
The Eight Track on the album called Center Mass is probably my favorite of the whole album, it’s so raw and deeply personal about Tyler’s struggles and it comes through in this phenomenal. On every rewatch, I think the song grows in quality. The Ninth Track is Cottonwood and the Tenth Track is One Way. They’re both pretty good songs, they just don’t jump out like the rest.
The Eleventh Song, called My Days Lie Dormant, might have the best chorus of any of the songs, just a catchy fun song that sticks in your head. Tally, which is the Twelfth Song is also really catchy and is a great penultimate song for the album. The final song on the album titled Intentions is weird in a good way. It uses the reversed melody of a previous ending song from the album Vessel. Intentions is so simple and just a beautiful way to close out such a special album.
However there is a bonus track included digitally called Drag Path. Drag Path is such a great epilogue, not having to be on the album means it can be more overtly religious, and its just got this melancholic beat that really sticks in my mind, days after listening.
Overall Twenty One Pilots put out another great album, finally concluding their decade long story. This isn’t the end of the band, and I’m excited to see how they move forward and in what new directions they’ll take their music.
