Twenty One Pilots are again with a brand new tune, “The Contract,” which serves because the lead single for his or her new idea album Breach. The report is ready to be the climactic finale of the five-album narrative that started with 2015’s Blurryface (the one with mega hits “Careworn Out” and “Trip”). After final 12 months’s Clancy — which leaned even more durable into the lore-driven, narrative epic-style they’re going for — “The Contract” is meant to be one thing of a ‘first episode’ for the concluding saga, selecting up on the cliffhanger second they left off at of their prior album.
It’s terrible.
In case you’re studying this and also you’ve at all times shared a disdain for the Ohio duo’s hybrid pop-rock-rap experiments, this doesn’t come as a shock. However for those who’re studying this and are one of many hundreds of Twenty One Pilots superfans, you would possibly assume calling “The Contract” a complete catastrophe is a bit unfair, given the scope of this long-running narrative they’ve been developing and the way a lot effort they’ve put into to world-building, easter eggs, and different good workout routines in fan engagement.
That’s positively true; I’m very impressed by how a lot Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have dedicated to the bit. Artists have lengthy tried idea albums and a number of other have used a number of consecutive information to trace an over-arching narrative. Nobody has actually performed it for a whole decade throughout 5 albums, and whenever you have a look at the unbelievable numbers this band has performed when it comes to streams, ticket gross sales, and rising their viewers, Twenty One Pilots are justifiably in their very own lane and have achieved this by means of embracing transmedia storytelling.
Associated Video
I say all that simply to reiterate that this new tune is an entire mess, a sloppy hodge-podge of genres and types that straight compete with each other from second to second. It’s advantageous to do idea songs — welcome, even — however their insistence on tying in these intensive, high-stakes kernels of lore doesn’t assist the ultimate product. The story is simply impactful if the tune is sweet by itself, and that isn’t the case right here. Leaping into “The Contract” with none of the thematic context is like watching Avengers: Endgame as your first Marvel film: It’s most likely nice for these within the know, but it surely’s largely simply incoherent noise and meaningless motion.
Divorced from no matter narrative is happening (which, judging by the music video, is a few loopy sci-fi fantasy nonsense higher left in a youngster’s sketchbook), “The Contract” is a problem sonically. There’s a nu-metal twist, autotuned muttering, a corny rap verse, and melodies that really feel extra involved with jamming in phrases than touchdown with weight; the way in which Joseph wraps the phrase “necromancer” across the melody’s triplet rhythm is grating, however shockingly, the falsetto-laden “Ooooh, guarantees and contracts” is even worse.
Dun’s fast, busy drumming, the chintzy, dramatic synths clashing with distorted electrical guitars, the terrible half-time (trap-inspired?) break, the stress between nostalgia ploys (the monitor completely remembers Meteora-period Linkin Park) and up to date manufacturing, Joseph’s unimaginative, generic traces about nervousness, insomnia, and paranoia… all of those parts clashing collectively makes for a usually dangerous listening expertise and units Breach as much as be an overdramatic mess.
Twenty One Pilots do have some good tunes right here and there, however “The Contract” is a worst-case-scenario Twenty One Pilots tune. You wouldn’t guess that, given the way in which the tune and music video are at present being acquired by their followers. Throughout the YouTube feedback part, dozens of sleuths are attempting to make sense of the easter eggs and narrative, whereas others are reacting to the overstuffed music as if it’s a deliberate reference to every of their earlier albums. “This isn’t only a tune — it’s a breakdown, a reminiscence, a warning unexpectedly,” one fan’s remark reads. “The Contract,” definitely, is for them; the remainder of us are left with a collage of scraps and half-hearted concepts.
Twenty One Pilots epitomize the streaming period, the place a mix-and-match stylistic technique and a prioritization of idea, aesthetics, and narrative come over the standard of the music itself. To some followers on the lookout for a extra immersive expertise with an artist that isn’t, say, Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo, Twenty One Pilots have tapped into that power higher than any rock-adjacent act of their nook. Immersion is cool, meta-textual references and lore-heavy choices are too. However idea or not, if the music behind it’s this dangerous, no matter world-building that comes alongside is meaningless.
