{"id":227832,"date":"2025-09-15T04:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T04:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227832\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T04:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T04:20:13","slug":"twenty-one-pilots-breach-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227832\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty One Pilots: Breach Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Twenty One Pilots in its purest form. Opener \u201cCity Walls\u201d is a five-minute litmus test, with gigantic \u201coh-woah\u201d hooks, soaring choruses, fuzzy bass tones, overdriven drums, and yes, rapping. It\u2019s also pure fan service; the deeply ludicrous $1 million music video<\/a> frequently calls back to past work and the song itself interpolates their single \u201cHolding on to You<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s fascinating to hear a Christian-adjacent band reprise the words \u201centertain my faith\u201d as the video depicts Clancy\u2019s submission to a religious cult, but this isn\u2019t the band to handle those implications.<\/p>\n

Having once contributed to the Suicide Squad soundtrack<\/a>, Pilots now convey the bubbly energy of James Gunn\u2019s Superman reboot. You don\u2019t need to know about the Bishops\u2019 necromancing powers to enjoy the frenetic snowboarding-game breakbeat and maniacal vocal processing of \u201cThe Contract.\u201d There are dumb-clever antics throughout: \u201cGarbage\u201d teases an uplifting \u201cSomething Just Like This<\/a>\u201d piano part before Joseph blurts out \u201cI feel like garbage!\u201d The song \u201cRawfear\u201d speeds up on the line \u201cnever slowing down,\u201d then abruptly returns to the original tempo\u2014because he can\u2019t escape the cycle. There\u2019s hardly a breather until \u201cCottonwood,\u201d a loving tribute to Joseph\u2019s grandfather, and the meditative closer, \u201cIntentions.\u201d There\u2019s also \u201cDownstairs,\u201d a dolled-up demo from their pre-major label days, but the vestigial self-seriousness feels out of place on an album like this.<\/p>\n

The most engaging motif in the Pilots catalog remains Joseph\u2019s complex relationship with his fans. On Vessel standout (give or take a reggae break) \u201cGuns for Hands<\/a>,\u201d he felt responsible for their mental health as his own deteriorated. On Trench ballad \u201cNeon Gravestones<\/a>,\u201d he cautioned them not to glorify his death should he one day lose his battle with depression. The tension comes to a head on Breach. Earlier this year, somebody briefly stole<\/a> a kick drum from Dun\u2019s kit at a concert, and throughout \u201cCenter Mass,\u201d the band samples another fan\u2019s cautionary \u201cI really don\u2019t think you should take that!<\/a>\u201d On \u201cDrum Show,\u201d seemingly in response to this fiasco, Joseph pays tribute to his burnt-out bandmate, who\u2019s \u201cstuck between a rock and a home, two places he does not wanna go.\u201d When Joseph says, \u201cThis has not been interesting in a while\u201d on \u201cOne Way,\u201d a fundamentally earnest band fully admits to disillusionment.<\/p>\n

Twenty One Pilots\u2019 pure pop songs\u2014like Scaled and Icy\u2019s \u201cShy Away<\/a>\u201d\u2014are often their best, which makes their ongoing attempts at hip-hop all the more frustrating. Joseph once gave Zane Lowe a playlist of his greatest influences<\/a>, and not only was Ben Gibbard on it twice, the only rapper was Matisyahu. On Breach, they sound like they maybe gave GNX<\/a> a passing listen (the call-and-response on \u201cCenter Mass\u201d is very \u201cReincarnated<\/a>\u201d), but their engagement with the genre remains shallow. No one has ever sounded less convincing than Tyler \u201cgangstas don\u2019t cry, therefore I\u2019m Mr. Misty Eyed<\/a>\u201d Joseph singing about \u201cempty Uzis\u201d on \u201cRawfear.\u201d But when they get the balance right, they wind up with some of their best material to date: \u201cMass\u201d starts with a suitably moody verse over a two-chord vamp and ends with a genuinely exciting double-time outro.<\/p>\n

Right now it\u2019s hard to imagine a cultural re-evaluation for Twenty One Pilots, the way people who grew up in the \u201900s eventually gave My Chemical Romance<\/a> and Linkin Park (both obvious influences) their flowers. But seeing the likes of MGK<\/a> attempt a similar style without the same ambition puts the duo\u2019s merit into perspective, and at least Pilots are thoroughly committed to their uncool niche. They\u2019d be more respected if they did away with the rapping entirely, but that would fundamentally change what this band is and why it got this far. As for poor Clancy, he fails to break the cycle and, in a Matrix Reloaded-esque twist, the rebels must find another \u201cClancy\u201d to continue the fight. It\u2019s a surprisingly sobering ending: No one here truly transcends their limitations, but it\u2019s only a matter of time before they try again.<\/p>\n

All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.<\/p>\n

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Twenty One Pilots: Breach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is Twenty One Pilots in its purest form. Opener \u201cCity Walls\u201d is a five-minute litmus test, with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":227833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1939,171,975,67,132,68,1940],"class_list":{"0":"post-227832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115206398090941389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}