Review: Twenty-One Pilot’s “The Contract” is Blurryface 2.0.

If you guys remember, last year I reviewed the band Twenty-One Pilot’s Clancy album, which had been rumored to be their final album which would wrap up the Dema/Clancy storyline that’s been around from the beginning of their band, began to be flushed out in Blurryface, and has become a massive rock saga over the last ten years. However, Clancy, despite the claims that it was the band’s final album proved itself to be leading to something else…something bigger. The album ended on a massive cliffhanger in the song “Paladin Straight”, with Clancy (a.k.a Tyler Joseph, the lead singer of Twenty-One Pilots) being captured by his archnemesis, the bishop Nico, representative of depression, anxiety, and all of Clancy’s fears. Fans then waited with bated breath for the “Paladin Straight” music video, which dropped a few weeks after the Clancy album was released, hoping that it would provide some answers. It did not, leaving us with more questions than answers. Fans began speculating that the Clancy album was incomplete, and we could expect another album, a Clancy part 2. This was further confirmed with the sudden and shocking resurrection of the Blurryface X account, which started randomly following and unfollowing people and leaving cryptic messages that became more frequent over the course of May and June.

Then, everything that we in the Skeleton Clique had been predicting came true, with Twenty-One Pilot’s announcing their new album, Breach, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of their massively successful Blurryface album. Breach will be coming out in September, so we have some time to wait, but Twenty-One Pilots did release the first song from the album called “The Contract,” so without further ado, let’s get into it.

“The Contract” picks up where “Paladin Straight” left off, even reusing some audio and visuals from that music video. The sound of it is something that I think does signal a possible end for the band, as it’s a combination of every major album leading up to it. It has the synth keyboard music of Vessel, the fast drums and guitar of Blurryface, the raps and screams of Trench, the falsetto of Scaled and Icy, and the overall musical quality of Clancy. As I said in the title, it’s like Blurryface 2.0 and it’s great.

The only problem I have with this song is that it’s quite repetitive, as there are almost no new lyrics for the entire song. It’s the bridge, chorus, etc. on repeat to the point where I had to wonder if TOP got some tips from the Babylon Bee’s worship song generator.

However, despite the repetitiveness of the song, “The Contract” – especially when watching the music video – does set up the general tone of Breach and what we can expect in September. This is going to be the final fight against Nico/Blurryface. Clancy is finally facing his demons, which is very well shown throughout the music video where we see just how chaotic his mind is under the influence of Nico as he tries to find solidity. He’s let Nico rule him for so long, but finally he’s breaking out.

Until next time,

M.J.