Twenty One Pilots have announced a new album ‘Clancy’ and shared its lead single, ‘Overcompensate’.
The Columbus duo’s sixth LP – the follow-up to 2021’s ‘Scaled and Icy’ – will drop on May 17 via Fueled By Ramen.
The band had been teasing their new era in recent weeks, with fans noticing that across Twenty One Pilots’ digital platforms, all of the artwork for their previous albums now featured strips of red tape covering all the eyes on each cover on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Some fans also received cryptic messages in the post with the letters coming from the Sacred Municipality of Dema. As highlighted by Kerrang!, the clues build on the lore explored across 2018’s ‘Trench‘ and 2015’s ‘Blurryface’.
Last week, the band released a trailer foreshadowing what’s to come, seemingly teasing a new character and location.
“I am trapped, stuck in a cycle I have never been able to break,” narrates frontman Tyler Joseph at the trailer’s beginning. “I want to believe this is the last time, but I don’t know for sure.”
In the trailer, the band unveiled a new plot twist in their narrative: Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun have become escapees, washed up on a new island called Voldsøy. A mysterious creature has also granted Joseph a “miraculous power”, where Joseph is seen reanimating a dead body back in the continent of Trench.
Towards the end, Joseph dons a brand-new balaclava, announcing: “I am returning to Trench. I am Clancy”.
Now, it has become clear that the band are returning to the world they last explored in ‘Trench’ for their new album.
Intriguingly, a voice in ‘Overcompensate’ declares “Welcome back to Trench,” and interpolates lyrics from ‘Bandito’, a song from ‘Trench’ – “I created this world to feel some control/Destroy it if I want/So I sing sahlo folina.”
Check out the video for ‘Overcompensate’ and see the tracklist of ‘Clancy’ below:
The tracklist of ‘Clancy’ is:
1. ‘Overcompensate’
2. ‘Next Semester’
3. ‘Midwest Indigo’
4. ‘Routines In The Night’
5. ‘Backslide’
6. ‘Vignette’
7. ‘The Craving (Jenna’s Version)’
8. ‘Lavish’
9. ‘Navigating’
10. ‘Snap Back’
11. ‘Oldies Station’
12. ‘At the Risk Of Feeling Dumb’
13. ‘Paladin Strait’
In other news, Shania Twain has opened up about her experience working with Joseph. Joseph worked on ‘The Hardest Stone’, taken from Twain’s sixth studio album ‘Queen of Me’.