Last month, I did a review on Twenty-One Pilot’s newest album, Clancy, the album that was advertised as being the band’s last release that would wrap up the Dema storyline that they’ve based all their albums off of, even the ones going back to their Self-Titled days. Basically, my thoughts on the album so far (more on that later) was that while it was good musically, talks about difficult topics in a way that’s constructive (unlike some other emo/post-emo bands out there), and kind-of feels like a rock opera to some extent because of how much it leans into the overarching story, it felt incomplete because of the lack of an ending. We were promised an ending, so where is it? In my earlier post I said I would wait until the video for “Paladin Straight” came out to see if it answered any of my questions, but unfortunately, it didn’t.
Let’s start with the good stuff about the “Paladin Straight” music video. Visually, it’s stunning. The CGI looks better than what we’re getting from huge film companies and the natural landscape of wherever they filmed the Bandito camp and Voldstoy looks amazing. Because of how beautiful the setting is, the music video almost feels like I’m watching a fantasy movie, especially when the Banditos rush into the fight against the dead who are being possessed by the bishops of Dema. The camera angles and call backs to Trench era music videos (especially referencing the music videos for “Nico and the Niners”, “Jumpsuit”, and “Levitating”, and the official lyric video for “Neon Gravestones”) and the Scaled and Icy livestream were really fun to watch as it felt like the story was finally putting the pieces together. And, once again, I can’t keep saying it enough, I love how the Clancy album has been using parts and pieces of old songs, incorporating them into the new music.
However, instead of giving us an ending in the music video, Twenty-One Pilots continues to leave us on a cliffhanger, but this time, it’s even worse than if they had just left us with the song since we see Tyler Joseph (a.k.a. Clancy) fall back into the hands of Nico. We want to know what happens next, and so far, it doesn’t look good. It seems that though Joseph sings that he doesn’t want to backslide, he inadvertently has, whether he wanted to or not.
This now leads to the question of: Is this the end for Twenty-One Pilots? Is this truly where we are going to be left off?
In my opinion, the answer is no, this is not the end for Twenty-One Pilots or the end of the Clancy/Dema storyline and here’s why. First of all, if you look at the previous singles that were released pre-Clancy, they all say “part of the full-length album *insert album name here*”. However, the singles that were released for Clancy don’t say that, instead just saying, “part of the album Clancy.” That’s a bit strange and leads me and much of the Twenty-One Pilots fandom to conclude that there’s more on the way, perhaps a Clancy part two that will wrap this whole thing up.
Secondly, Twenty-One Pilots has been slowly but surely leaving a trail of breadcrumbs all over their X page to what might be coming next, the most notable of which has been the Blurryface account being reactivated after it had been dormant since the SAI era back in 2021. Blurryface reactivated on June 17 of this year and since then has been following and unfollowing fans of the band, and more recently replied to a popular Twenty-One Pilots fan, KEONS, during the Clancy: Digital Remains livestream, saying, “ISA W.” Blurry also changed his header to show the Digital Remains puzzle and replied to another fan with a video from DMAORG, the official website for Dema that was created around the Trench era and hasn’t been super active since Scaled and Icy. So far, he has been on a streak of blocking and unblocking random TOP fans (the full timeline which is constantly being updated can be found here: https://blurryfacetimeline.crd.co/#timeline). This certainly suggests that the band is doing something behind the scenes and from the sound of it, it’s big.
The third piece of evidence for the release of a part two to the Clancy album is the fact that throughout the Digital Remains puzzle and livestream, tweets made by the band, and even the Clancy album as a whole, the numbers 6/25 keep appearing. While some of these may be coincidence (such as the timestamp for “Paladin Straight” being 6:25), other references to the numbers 6/25 keep popping up in ways that seem very intentional. To most people, this might seem like the fandom is freaking out for nothing, but Twenty-One Pilots is very good at hiding Easter eggs that hint at new songs in very cryptic ways, even going so far as to hide them in code for pictures. Though most of the fandom thinks that this means that a new part of the album is going to come out today (June 25, 2024) to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the end of the Blurryface era, I think it more likely means that we could expect a part two in June of next year, 2025. This would line up a lot more with Twenty-One Pilot’s track record of taking a while to release new albums and would give them time to build up the hype.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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