Transcript for:
Exploring 21 Pilots' Lore and New Album

Hello friends and welcome back to another video today's video is going to be a little bit of a deep dive into 21 Pilots lore before the release of their new album Clancy because this story has absolutely dominated my life I have not been thinking about anything else which is so wild to me because one month ago I knew absolutely nothing but once I started I just could not stop and I figured I'd take you guys along on the journey maybe some of you are curious maybe you've been missing out and you want to catch up before this new album drops and all the rest of the story comes out I can say with complete confidence this video is not going to cover everything because it's nearly a decade of story that we're trying to follow so if there's anything that I missed or anything that you want to elaborate on or clarify please say it in the comments and I'm not even going to begin to touch on theories and Easter eggs and anything like that so I would love to see any contributions that you guys have because I am so invested in all of this I will say I've been a fan of 21 Pilots since like 2017 when they kind of got big with the whole blurry face thing but I did drift away from the plot past that album I kind of did not listen to trench at all I remember when it was released I remember that time per period but I kind of fell off I fell away from it I stopped listening then I stopped listening to scal and iy I did see them perform a couple times live but I wasn't really following the story of it all I saw that they started to release new stuff and it was specifically lore based stuff but I didn't know if I could get myself back into it because it's been so long and then their most recent music video next semester came out and one of my friends recommended that I watch it and since then it has been the only thing that I think about within 3 weeks of that song coming out it became my number one most listen to song for the past 12 months if that tells you anything I am so excited for the next album and I wanted to understand it as much as possible which also shout out to my resident 21 Pilots expert for getting me back into this and for also sharing some theories and kind of showing me some things that I might have missed and also for just reintroducing me to the joy of being a part of a fandom being in a group of people that are so passionate about something because it's been so long since I felt this way about anything so to all of a sudden be thrown back into a fan base that not only is familiar but that I know is so strong because really so much of this band relies on the fan base and I think that's so special that's definitely something that's going to come up a lot throughout this video is just the way that this band connects with the fans because it's just so I've never seen anything like it you know but when I was approaching this video I really had no clue how to go about it because again it is pretty much an entire decade's worth of story and lyrics and videos and so many things that go beyond that and I had no clue where to start so I tried working backwards I definitely had a fun time doing it I love researching and I love going back and finding all of these hidden things that nobody even talks about anymore but it meant so much in the moment and I was trying to think of how to present all of this information in one video to where it actually makes sense and it's something that you can follow and it's something that will build over time rather than being released in random verse that you have to piece together afterwards so I figured just for Simplicity sake we're going to go timeline we're going to start at the beginning so if you don't know 20one Pilots is a musical Duo from Columbus Ohio Tyler Joseph and Josh Dunn Tyler originally started the band in 2009 with two other members but they left and Josh came in I am desperately hoping that if you're here watching this video or getting ready for the new album or anything like that you at least know that much I'm assuming if you're here you have at least a baseline idea of what this band is these two guys mean a whole lot to a whole lot of people their music largely talks about struggles with mental health and doubt and questioning your faith all of these kind of really big ideas that a lot of people are scared to talk about which reminds me before this video starts just a quick little cont warning because like I said this band does talk about some more heavy topics so if you are not in the right place to be hearing that then maybe this isn't the video for you they are important things to talk about and these are things that we need to have more open discussion about but only if it's healthy to do so so if that's not the type of content that you're comfortable hearing about right now then no harm done get out of here go take care of yourself let's all stay safe yeah really appreciate how vulnerable these artists can be with their own personal experiences I feel like that's a really big thing that ties this all together is just the fact that people are being real with each other talking about topics that are usually uncomfortable or shied away from but it's kind of all laid out here for us to connect with and it's just it means a lot I could talk for hours about the real world impact of this band and the way that they have helped so many people by connecting everybody over the shared struggles and showing that it's okay to feel these things and the big idea of you are not alone and just it's so much and it's so special but we can't we can't be there for all of that so talking about the music they've put out six albums Clancy is going to be their seventh they put out their self-titled album 21 pilots in 2009 Regional at Best in 2011 vessel in 2013 blurry face 2015 trench in 2018 scaled in icy in 2021 and then the seventh album is coming out this year 2024 it's coming out on May 17th which is just a little bit under a month from me recording this but with that brief introduction out of the way let's let's just get into it 2015 brings us the arrival of Glory face I guess this isn't really relevant for the story because it's kind of just real world but to give you a little bit of context of where the band was at at the time this timeline is going to start off on May 11th 2015 that date marks the start of the blurry face tour 98 shows around this time a Whole Decade ago they were already doing worldwide tours and that's just so unfathomable to me to think about the fact that they were that big that long ago and they're still doing this I was just so shocked to see that number and to see how far they were traveling even that long ago and now the world has expanded so much so just for a little bit of context they've been doing this for a while and the same week that that tour started off they also released the blurry face album which is kind of where a lot of their fans came from that was kind of the album that really blew up for them I will say I'm a little bit confused about the exact date because I've seen a lot of people saying that it was May 17th 2015 which would make this release 9 years later but Spotify says May 15th regardless the songs are out this album has a character called blurry face who you kind of get to meet throughout the album and he represents mental illness specifically doubt and insecurity that's kind of the big idea of this whole album which obviously it's called a blurry face I don't know why I'm explaining it like that but to talk about the songs because there's a lot to talk about just from the content alone where they have the songs they have the music videos and then they have the actual concerts and everything else but I feel like for my brain the best way to approach this was To Go lyrics music videos as they came out and then concerts and any other content as it happens but the lyrics we're going to assess as the album is released so I'm going to talk about all of the lyrics of the blurry face album with what we knew in the story up until this point which obviously was not much because this is kind of where the story starts but then as we go along we'll be able to tie in a little bit more information back to this album and obviously I'm going to keep saying it but I'm not going to get every single thing there's going to be some lyrics that I'm sure call to Future stuff or reference past stuff and I'm not going to catch every single thing or I'm not going to think that it's worth mentioning or whatever it is so I'm just going to try and touch on some of the big things that are very obviously related to Future stuff throughout this entire album is the idea of fighting an other but that other representing mental illness and doubt and anxiety and all of these bad feelings that people are facing that's a huge theme of this album and also as we've already talked about the band as a whole everything that they put out kind of ties back into the mental health aspect of things but stuff like heavy dirty Soul talking about smoking out the infestation in his mind ride talking about fantasizing about the end stressed out he says he's insecure and he cares what people think it goes on pretty much all of these songs reference some struggle some internal struggle going on in the song stressed out Tyler says that he wants to go back to the good old days when he didn't have to worry about it but blurry face a manifestation of these terrible feelings is controlling more and more of his life as he's getting older Lane boy talks about how the band is battling with trying to be creative and following what they want to do but also what mainstream media wants them to do and how they should be performing and what songs should be about versus what they feel like they want to put out he sings My creativity is only free when I'm playing shows the song doubt could be related to somebody questioning their faith but an interesting line from that is gnawing on the Bishops claw our way up the system which could be potentially the start of something because as we'll see pretty soon Bishops become a huge thing I do think for this song it was used more as just a word to tell the story I don't think this far back they were planning to have the Bishops as major characters in the story I think it's more just hearing that word and then looking back and being able to turn it into something rather than planning it that far back because there are some people that will argue that this story has been going on since 2009 and I do think that would be cool but I don't think that's what happened it's a lot more like they're able to look back at the old content that they've already put out and they're able to tie it all together now the song we don't believe what's on TV also ties into a Future album because exactly what the title is saying if something is presented on a TV you should maybe question it in message man Tyler sings these lyrics aren't for everyone only few understand which again goes into that whole idea of community and how people who are listening to the music yes you have mainstream listeners who are going to get some takeaway but you also have other people that are understanding on a deeper level either you understand because you can relate to the feelings or you understand because you're following the story that they're putting out that song also touches on his feelings of how music can act as an escape to where if you're not feeling your greatest you can pour it out into your music and then through that you can connect with other people Hometown has the where we're from there's no sun our hometown is in the dark which could also potentially tie to Future stuff it's a little bit hard to make note of the lyrics from these albums because this is very much just the the bits and pieces that will come together to make a story but at this point the story wasn't being planned a lot of the story came from their success and then seeing how can they grow from this idea so in the beginning this is kind of all that it was but there are some things that are worth mentioning because you can maybe see how they've grown I feel like the important thing to remember is that the same person who's writing the songs now is the person that was writing the songs 10 years ago so there are going to be similar themes because he's still being real through his music like he's saying in this this is an outlet right this is how you can express things when you're not feeling your greatest or when you want to connect with other people so stuff like a car or a torch these are symbols that show up throughout all of their music and people can tie it back and be like oh they're so smart they've been thinking about it for this long but I think more than likely those are symbols that had already meant something to Tyler and Josh and they're able to carry it through and build a story off off of it now but that doesn't mean that there were writing songs 10 years ago that relate in the same way and then at the end of that album goner he says I've got two faces blur's the one I'm not I need your help to take him out he recognizes that there is a distinction between him and this bad side of him that he's been fighting the blurry face tour ended on May 7th 2016 but less than a month later the boys were back on the road with the emotional Road Show tour this tour was 123 shows and went until June 25th 2017 which means almost 2 years of backtack tour which is just so overwhelming I cannot imagine especially with how quickly they grew during that time even those two years completely changed how people viewed them I feel like also in the middle of this on June 21st 2016 they released heathens for The Suicide Squad movie I've seen some people saying that this video specifically is where the actual Story begins like the actual visuals for the story I don't know if that's true but I do know that it inspired everything that came next because it was something new it was something different to think about and something different to work on I guess one of the reasons that people think this is because in the heathen's music video Tyler has a scar going across his nose and that comes up in other videos he still has a scar in his nose but people are saying it's moving around or maybe it represents something else there's lots of theories it's not really consistent it's just a thing that's there sometimes and also the fact that in this video Tyler is in a prison and the jumpsuit turns from Orange to Yellow which becomes the color of the next album but I feel like it's foreshadowing at best I don't think this starts the story but in the heathen's music video Tyler is trapped in a prison Josh is able to play his little drums and get him out of there and they also release a bunch of other prisoners they have a little bit of a concert and then by the end of the video it circles back around and they're trapped back in their cells I think the visuals are cool I think the foreshadowing is cool but more importantly is the way Tyler viewed that song I Feel Like That Matters more than anything because in a Zan low interview which I will definitely link those Tyler kind of breaks down each of the albums with him and it's such in-depth interviews I really appreciate the way that the interviewer went about it I'm going to try to link lots of things that I'm referencing but I know specifically I would like to link those because they were really cool interviews and just a really good way to see insight into his thought process but Tyler explained that he had been feeling uninspired after the constant work that was the blurry face album and then the tour and just constantly being on the move and then the Heathen song gave him something new to think about it was an exercise to get back into writing and I really it was an exercise to get back into writing but he talks about how he wanted it to be a way to connect with his fans we kind of got shoved into the [Music] mainstream and I felt like I always wanted to explain to the mainstream audience like about our fans and who we really are and try to bring them along and kind of go listen this is this is what you should expect you know we're we're powerful and and these kids have something to say and they're worth listening to and so that song kind of became something that I wanted to write to to explain our Dynamic with our fans but I love that when he felt pressure and he felt overwhelmed from all the success that they were having and he felt maybe a little bit of writers block he fell back on what he knew which is his connection with the people that care and the people that understand and the people that are going through similar things he fell back on being vulnerable and emotional and honest and bonding over Mutual struggles it's just so good because it shows what they want to be in my had this period of the band was like one of their peaks and the fact that even during this time he still looking at mainstream popularity and he's saying well I'm going to go focus on the people that really care about all of this and that really understand what's going on here I just I think that's so special and that's something that is still it it comes up so much I know I'm kind of talking in circles but it just makes me so happy to see somebody care so genuinely about the people that care about them but this did also help him shake off a little bit of his writer block post blurry face and that is what leads us into the next album and officially into the storyline on February 3rdd we get music video for heavy dirty Soul one of the songs off of blurry face the video starts off with Tyler riding in a car but it's unclear who's driving the only time we see the front seat of this car it's either the back of a hooded figure or there's nobody there at all Tyler is being driven past jaw she keeps almost hitting them but they swarve at the last second and his drum set slowly starts to catch on fire and along with that Tyler's car starts to fall apart by halfway through the song Tyler's car is missing all four doors and also the roof so things are not looking so good for it right before the car explodes Tyler jumps off performs his little ending with Josh and the car is Flaming behind them we don't know it yet but this video is the start of everything we're not quite there yet but don't worry we will be on February 12th 2017 the boys won a Grammy for Best pop Duo for stressed out and yes this is the one that they took their pants off for 3 Days Later is the release of the first sleepers chapter and these were a set of Vlogs that showed the end of the emotional Road Show tour they would have a acoustic versions of some of the songs off of the album playing and then under that would just be little cute clips of them practicing or hanging out or performing or whatever it is just little moments from the end of the tour there were five sleepers chapters that wrapped up the end of the blurry face era and the emotional Road Show tour on February 15th we got we don't believe what's on TV March 6th with messag Man March 21st was Hometown April 25th was not today and July 5th was goner at the end of the fifth chapter when the video is done there is a less than second long clip of an eye closing it is so quick and it is so ominous because what does it mean when I was doing research on this video and I had to go back and watch it genuinely it hurt my chest to look back at that because I remember being a fan in that moment and watching it and seeing everything that came after and it hurt so bad to have to revisit that it was so dramatic it was the most life-changing thing of the time if you were not there you you simply cannot understand the impact that this and everything that follows had no words can explain how emotionally devastating this all was but in a very fun way because it's like what are they what are they doing you know I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here but if you know you know right sleepers episode 5 ends with a very fast visual of an eye closing and this is the last thing that we see from the band for a while the next day July 6th 2017 is the day ton and Pilots want silent I you the eye closing brings us one year of Silence fans called it the Hiatus although that was never an official name but that is what it's called and what happened during that time over the course of July 6th the same eye that we see closing at the end of the sleepers video can be seen on both their profile picture and their banners on social media the profile picture was the same exact thing that we saw in the sleepers video of a red eye with their symbol in it and then the banner was a little bit different it was still the same eye but instead of giving us what the eye looks like we're seeing what the eye is looking at so through the vague shape of an eye we are looking out at a crowd of fans throughout the day people started to notice some changes because the eyes were closing again the profile picture very much just mirrored what we already saw but slower because it's still images as their profile picture but the banner was interesting because there were some more details to it there were some some lyrics reflected again backwards because you're looking out so you're behind the words but it was lyrics from some songs so as the day goes on we got you'll have to come and find me from polarize my pretty sleeper from El Miss believer wouldn't it be great if we could just lay down from slowtown I will fear the night again from truce nobody dreams when they Blink from kitchen sink remember the morning is when night is dead from message Man and finally now I just sit in silence from car radio silence that was it with one exception we don't really see anything from the band for an entire year past this point the one exception is an award show on July 17th 2017 where Josh goes up to accept an award he was going up to accept an award for most dedicated fans but Tyler was not there which is pretty unusual because normally Tyler is kind of the spokesperson of everything when addressing this Josh said um Tyler wishes he could be here um he's actually off severing ties with dimma but I had to make sure that I was here to accept this award what could it mean right there's not really much of a reaction at that point because what is dimema why is Tyler severing ties it's kind of just a throwaway comment but obviously it's something that hints at whatever's going on because that's really the only thing that we were getting and I might be getting a little bit ahead of myself here but the band did later clarify on Reddit what dimma is just to give you a little glimpse into the direction that we're going with all of this Dima was inspired by Dogma or towers of Silence from Zoroastrianism these towers were used for a zoroastrian tradition where you would put decomposing bodies into a tower and let vultures feed on the bodies I guess not just vultures but scavenger birds in general but vultures are kind of the main thing and they become a symbol of this album the tradition started to die out because they just were running out of vultures the vultures were dying out and because of that they couldn't carry out their religion and Tyler explained that he thought it was intriguing the idea of a Dying religion of something that they couldn't control the declining vulture population meant that the tradition couldn't be carried out and there's only so much that you can do to stop that he explains that he was interested in how something so natural like vultures going extinct it completely gets in the way of their practice demma Tower of Silence vultures moving on for a long time there is nothing from their social media from their music from there is not a word until April 21st 2018 fans noticed a hidden message on the vessel merch website that presented a URL of dmaorg doino this led to an error page saying you are in violation they mustn't know you were here no one should ever find out about this you can never tell anyone about this for the sake of the others survival you must keep this silent we must keep this silent no one can know no one can know no one can know there are capitalized letters throughout this message and when you put them together they spell out east is up again what does it mean it's cryptic it's weird it's confusing but it matters so much genuinely I have chills just talking about it just reading through this because it's so it's so good I don't know how specific I can get here about what happened because I feel like there's some things where it's just like fans found this and then use that to build on it and have more information and I don't really know how clearly I can lay it out the secret message within the vessel page had a gift and when you layered the different frames of the gift you got a more complete URL part of the URL was just a bunch of dots which fans recognized to be the blurry face album and when you assigned each I got so overwhelmed trying to explain what I was saying and it did not follow so we're just going to try again here really fast so basically something I had failed to mentioned before is the fact that each of the circles on the blurry face album correlates with one of the songs each circle has a different design on it and that goes along with the cover art for the different songs like if you go on YouTube for example the thumbnail and the visuals on each of the songs is what aligns the music with the circles fans saw these eight dots there's a space and then there's one sep ated and saw that to be the blurry face album so they looked at each of these dots and lined them up with what number on the track list the song was so for example goner is 14 it's the last song on the album so the number 14 comes after a space because the goner dot is separated by a line that's a complicated way of going about it because if you just look at the violation code from the original error message it's the same thing ultimately it doesn't matter though we just we need to get that number to get the bigger picture the full URL once you put everything together is dmaorg info found1 1539864214 clan. HTML on this website we get the start of Clancy's letters each of the letters has a title that at first seems like random numbers but actually they dates that are significant to the band the first letter that is on this hidden website is titled 98806 Moon 18 and that date is Josh Dunn's birthday I would like to make it known I do have all of the letters here but I'm not going to show this just because that's impossible and also bright but I do have them all and it is very fun to hold and to look at them I will put the actual letters on the screen so that you can hopefully see it a little bit better the first letter just throws us straight into this world and it starts by describing how the author is comfortable living in diema until very recently they didn't realize until their ninth year living there that something might be off which nine is a number that we see come up again and again there's nine dots on the blurry face there's nine years there's nine years between Clancy and it goes on nine is a very significant number it seems also this letter came out in 2008 which if you go back 9 years that's when the band started he talks about how he used to look at Deemo with Wonder but now he realized that it was a trap all along how he and the other people living in his region represent a certain Bishop With Honor you learn that each Bishop watches over a different region of the city and the author describes that his Bishop Keon is unwavering and forthright those adjectives stand out with what we will learn about the Bishops because that is not how you would describe them we will see later that the Bishops are pretty sneaky they're not very for northri it's a weird thing that Keon is described this way because that is not how you will see the other Bishops to be and the bottom of this letter is signed off with the name Clancy somebody we will become very familiar with also along the side of the letter it says West Wall is blocked East is up which we have seen that message before East is up that was in the first error message that we got so just from this letter we know that dimema which Josh had referenced at the award show is a city divided into regions that are controlled by Bishops I will say just getting this and else probably leads to more questions than answers but I guess that's what we're here to clear up along with the letters there are also different pictures and gifts and other content that relates to the story document 98812 moon1 which is Tyler's birthday is an image of what looks like the bottom of the FP logo which I didn't really talk about that but it was on the screen earlier FP for the few the proud and the emotional and on this image there's text that says identified as failed perimeter Escape failed perimeter Escape FP the meaning has changed the letters are the same but it means something different here failed perimeter Escape by Dima Council violation of section and then the number that we already saw from the URL of the violist code of conduct again more questions than answers who are the violists 0912 moon 29 is the self-titled album release date and the image is looking up at Vultures lining a wall similar to The Towers of Silence that we were talking about how the vultures are looking down at their prey 1107 moon8 which is the regional at best album release is a cropped image of a mathematician that we're not going to talk about right now but he will become significant later 01301 Moon 08 is vessel's album release and it gives us a map of a circular City and a torn off Corner that we later will see reads sacred Municipality of Dima United violists sacred suggesting religion right which goes along with the Bishops and also United violists leads us to believe that the violists are the people following that religion we don't know what they believe in really the map has nine circles in the center of the city which again looks pretty similar to the blurry face album each of the circles has a name over it we have Andre Liston Keon Nico rro Sarver Nils and vomo my apologies if I pronounce them wrong and because we've already heard that Keon is one of the Bishops specifically Clancy's Bishop we can tell that these are the nine Bishops that rule each of the regions of Dima I love how there's just a huge part of the map that I just didn't mention at all aside from the obvious things that we're looking at like the Bishops and the areas that they control the map also has a city limit and beyond that is the necropolis the city really is not that big on the map and there's a big surrounding area with a lot of little rectangles but that's for the dead I just completely did not mention that at all that is significant right because we can assume that means the entire area is filled with bodies just something to keep in mind might be important later also if you take this map and rotate it so that East is up which is the message that we've been getting the names on the circles line up with the songs from the blurry face album because like we already talked about each of the circles on the blurry face album correlates to one of the songs like how the bottom right corner is a black circle with birds and that would represent goner when the Dema map is rotated so that East is up each of the names lines up with lyrics from the songs that they go with so you'd have Keon Sarver and listo on top for example Nils who is now on the bottom right once youve rotated the map would line up with gonner his name can be found within the lyrics beaten down I'll slip away it's not direct it's not obvious split up between multiple words but down all slip following this theme rro would line up with doubt of temperature is dropping lizen comes from Polar eyes all I feel is denial and so on each of their names comes from the songs except for Nico that name cannot be found in the song stressed out but I would argue that that name is maybe the most easy to find because he says it my name's blurry face and I care what you think Nico is blurry face or maybe all of the Bishops are blurry face the Bishops are kind of an extension of the blurry face character where in the previous album it was just one character in this new album It's building into an entire world underneath this image was a caption saying severing ties which is something that Josh said Tyler is off severing ties with DEA there's also the repeated phrase of get out the compass lies they don't control you with capital letters throughout it that spell out east is up we're really pushing that message 0702 moon2 is the date that they won the Grammy and at first this image doesn't seem like much it's just a couple of yellow dashes across the page it is going to line up with something else in just a second 0707 moon 07 is the date of the start of the Hiatus and this starts off with another letter from Clancy it's not as long as the last one but still significant the letter touches on how Dima has always been the place that Clancy has existed but it's never really felt like home he hopes for experiences and discoveries that can only exist outside of the wall along with this it has several missing letters which when you pull those out of the message they spell out you are still sleeping when the eye closed with the start of the Hiatus almost all of the lyrics related to sleeping going to sleep the night this message confirms that the period of sleep we saw almost a year ago is not over yet you are still sleeping 0707 moon6 is a gift of a cheetah with letters flashing over it way too fast to read comfortably but when you take all those letters out they spell out you still don't know his real name do you with some letters in between that spell out Nik noik which as we saw from the map Nico is one of the Bishops 0707 moon7 is the date that Josh accepted the award that Dimo was first mentioned and it's an image of a group of people looking down over a cliff with the caption not my only friend is it suggesting that the people in the image are more friends is it saying that these people are not friends who's to say the image also has the file name 2018 514 38 which if you take those numbers turn them into letters you get get trench also I have no clue how people thought to do this I would not have the brain power but if you take those numbers and put them into the URL in the same place where the missing numbers were last time you get an audio that when you pitch it up and reverse it it says we are Bandidos 0807 Moon 01 from this point the title of the letters those dates all line up with what the letter is from it's not referencing the past anymore it's now following when the letters are being put out we get a gift of a vulture and also another letter from Clancy also this letter is where those yellow dashes from earlier come in and the letter of Clancy questions how the Bishops are so easily able to erase the dreams of the citizens of Dima he explains that when violism was instituted it took away Hope from a lot of people he says the people used to be filled with hope that motivated existence but now the people live in a trance of obedience the only light he's seen is in the eyes of those being smeared the bright eyes are strangled by the darkness of The Bishop's hands it's not really clear what being smeared means at this point but I do think it's a funny term and again when you take those yellow dashes from earlier and overlap them with this picture you get the words we are Bandidos highlighted there were also yellow numbers that correlate with letters from this letter if you take the letter that is next to each of the numbers and you unscramble it again it spells out trench so some of the repeated phrases we have we have trench we have East is up and we have we are Bandidos 08075 gives us an image of an empty landscape and also a letter from Clancy I did invert this picture just so that I could see it better and so that I would use less printer I'll be honest but this letter came out one day before the year anniversary of the eye closing so it's pretty significant right we're coming up on a big anniversary here the letter is anticipating a big event saying that we're almost ready and instead of hiding they're going to make an effort to be noticed the use of the word we are is also interesting because Clancy is now a we there's a group here there's a group effort being made the letter says that once a year there's an annual assemblage of glorified this is some sort of yearly religious spectacle but we don't really know much past that who are the glorified why are they Gathering we don't know much about that I will say there are some people when this was coming out that got really deep into theories it's the most out there thing that only so many people could possibly know about unless you really went digging he says that they're willing to risk getting smeared this is the second mention of being smeared we know it's not a good thing and we know it's something that the Bishops are doing to people the end of the letter says by morning everything will be different I'm terrified and excited all at the same time they don't control us we can assume this they refer ref to Dima or the Bishops there are also dots along the outside of the letter and if you take where they are on the page and then you count that many lines down based on how many dots are in the line if that makes sense like the top two dotts are only one so you go to the first line the second set are two dots so you go to the second line and the bottom is six dots so you count six dots up and the letter that lines up with that is what the message is coming from and guess what this spells out it's not East is up this time the message says wake up before we got you are still sleeping now wake up something big is coming and I did note this later when I was reading back through everything this letter stands out to me as being a very weird one we're going to talk a lot later about these letters and about Clancy obviously because that's where this is all going but this letter specifically stood out to me as being a little bit odd for one thing this letter never clarifies if the writer Clancy is going in or out it says that they're going to try to be noticed but I don't really know what they're doing with what we already know from Clancy you can assume that they're trying to get out because we know that they have lived in Dema for however long and that they're craving the outside world but this letter doesn't mention that also the vague they don't control us where in the past they have clearly stated kons the Bishops diema whatever it is so to say they don't control us it it just it feels different we'll talk about it later it's just it's just a thought you can just let that simmer the next day one year since the Hiatus began we get an image with the title they can't see fce300 which is a code for the color yellow if we're going off of the vague they meaning Bishops like we did for the last letter we can assume this means that the Bishops can't see that specific shade of yellow we will see very soon that color of yellow defines this album 08078 is a letter from Clancy but this time instead of being typed it's handwritten Clancy has officially escaped diema in the past he had been talking about how he was trapped how he wanted to see what was beyond the walls now he's finally out he doesn't have the same resources as he did when he was in the city so he's handwriting on scraps of paper he writes that for the first time he feels weightless and like the air is worth breathing in which is such a heartbreaking line to read but also imagine how relieving that must be to be trapped in the city for so long and now you're finally seeing the world Beyond it he writes that he feels betrayed by what was once his home and he won't be able to look at it the same if he ever does go back he raed these green Cliffs engulf me and place me right in the middle try trench is quite precarious at times and it's easy to grow weary trench again we're seeing this come up again and again the location of our new album but it's real and it's true and I'd much rather endure reality than to mindlessly be obedient to a life that someone else created for me he's lost he's in an unknown place he really has never experienced something like this before but he feels more at home than he ever has he figures there have to be more people out in trench besides just him and he's excited to see what's out there this is just a very hopeful message of somebody who's getting out of a really bad situation and they're experiencing freedom for the first time and it just it feels really helpful the final paragraph of this letter says I am out here and I am very alive I'm sometimes scared but always discovering something new and I will not stop cover me we also get an image of a figure on the ground which if you look at the shape of that paper with this letter you can see that it's flipped it's one side and the other so again using whatever resources you can writing on one side of the picture around this time fans also received an email of an i beginning to open and that brings us into [Music] trench on July 9th the boys officially returned to social media with a video of a yellow eye opening which yes this is the same image that fans had received in an email but now everybody sees everybody knows they're coming back the next day July 10th the eye is open just a little bit more it's mirroring what we saw a year ago where the eye was slowly closing now every single day it's opening a little bit more until July 11th on the 10th there was audio playing over the eye which was a muffled version of what we would soon see is the song jumpsuit because on July 11th that song came out 21 Pilots posted the music video for the song jumpsuit officially kicking off the trench era I feel like normally it would make more sense to talk about the lyrics and then analyze the videos as they came out but since we got the videos first I'm going to talk about visually what the story was and then we'll break down the lyrics When It's All in This bigger context of the album the music video for jumsuit starts off with Tyler Standing On Top of the car that was used in heavy dirty sold the car that ended up burning and exploding it immediately ties the storyline of blurry face and of that song Or that music video at least to what's about to come the video opens he's standing on the car and he says we've been here the whole time you were asleep time to wake up we've been here the whole time you were asleep time to wake up immediately we leave this familiar scene and we fly over a valley or maybe I don't know trench we see Tyler flat on the ground which is the image that we had gotten from Clancy's letters 0807 Moon 08 the inverted picture of a figure on the ground was Tyler as Tyler stands up you see a glimpse of the nothingness that rounds him but also you zoom over to a hooded man riding a white horse as Tyler is walking through trench he looks up and sees the thing that we saw from image 0707 Moon 17 the group of people standing up on the cliff with the caption not my only friend everything that we saw before is now being put into the actual official work of the band rather than just being cryptic messaging from some obscure website we watch as the hooded figure on the horse races up to Tyler before finally catching up to him everybody from up on the cliff is watching Tyler is watching it's it's about to go down as the person on the horse gets up to Tyler he seems to close his eyes and kind of accept his fate like he knows that whatever this thing is that's coming for him there's no fighting it and the man that's been chasing him walks up and rubs black around his neck the black that we've seen throughout all of the blurry face album where he has it on his neck and his hands it's the same type of thing now except now this random figure is doing it to him Tyler follows the man on the horse through the bridge of the song before flower pedals start to rain down from the people up on the cliff they're throwing down their support and with this potential sign of support Tyler takes his chance to try and run away one last time the video ends with Tyler back on the ground but this time with a flower to his chest and the final scene of the video is the hooded man staring up at Josh the video Ends by circling back around to the end of heavy dirty Soul where we see Tyler going into the back of the burned trunk of the car grabbing out the outfit that he wears in the jumy video and then walking off into the distance it fully ties the story line together you can see that whatever had happened he had this outfit planned and ready and he had a destination in mind at least a little bit or at least he was confidently walking away from something the cycle continues so much of what they do is based around cycles and just being trapped in the same thing or always returning to what's familiar or what's comfortable or most of what they do is talking about fighting these Cycles pretty soon after the jumpsuit music video was released we also get a letter from Clancy that describes the events we had just seen in the music video we see Clancy narrating what happened to Tyler the letter is titled 0807 Moon 18 and it's under the file name unalone Clancy felt like he was being watched while he was out in trench or he felt like there had to be other people out there he can't be the only one and now he's seeing somebody else for the first time maybe it's still handwritten so you can tell that wherever Clancy is he's still free from diema he's still off on his own it describes how he thought he was a single lone person in this unknown world and he looked down off of the cliff and saw a figure he describes how Tyler as he's walking through trench acts like it's familiar he's not afraid like Clancy is he acts like he's been here before he says that when Tyler was looking up at the cliff where the Bandidos we get their name now were looking down at them he couldn't tell if Tyler was frightened or encouraged he watched as Nico the bishop came up on Tyler and he was surprised by the different vibe that this guy gave off because Keon like we talked about earlier is honest and kind and clany liked Keon but the same cannot be said for Nico niik feels threatening he's not gentle or warm and clany writes about how he watched Nico smear Tyler's neck so now we get a visual to go along with what that term means where the light goes out of people's eyes and this is the same marking that Tyler had had for the entire last album Clen is frightened by everything that's going on down there so he runs away and he considers returning to dimma because at least it's somewhere familiar it's somewhere where he knows what's going on even if obviously he knows it's a trap and knows there's so much more out there but it's scary he writes that even after seeing the Bandidos he feels more alone than ever July 26 gives us a music video for the song Nico and the ners and August 8th brings us the levitate music video which together these three music videos complete the trio of the visuals for the story line these are the three music videos that really tell us the story for this album and it's out before the album even is so let's start with the video for Nico and the Niners similar to the jumpsuit video we start by flying over a big empty landscape but this time we see a big structure in the distance and as we get closer we can see that this is the city of Dima with the big nine pillars in the center that represent each of the Bishops we're going through it we're going into it where we find Tyler it starts off with Tyler taking flowers and putting them into a box that already has flowers in it and you can assume that this represents all of the previous attempts that he has made to escape diema in the same way that Clancy was talking about wanting to escape DEA Tyler has been trying we cut to a scene of the nine Bishops in front of a crowd of very sad very gray looking people they do not look happy to be there meanwhile Tyler is packing a bag and getting ready to maybe go on the run again we also get to see more of the Bandidos the people that were up on the cliff throwing the flowers down you don't really know what they're doing yet but they're moving through the dark with torches they're going on a mission we also see the Bishops doing something with glass we don't know they're crafting the Bandidos make their way into Dima and Surround Tyler as he's making his Escape they do the stressed out handshake Tyler and Josh and then Tyler is standing in front of the group of Bandidos as he sings we'll win but not everyone will get out which sounds kind of like a call to action he's talking directly to the Bandidos here they have to fight Dio they have to find a way to escape but not everybody's going to make it but also just from this alone it kind of looks like he is now going to lead them he's telling them how it's going to be it just feels very powerful the Bishops notice a disturbance within the city because Josh is drumming so hard that they can see the water moving but by the time they go to check it out the Bandidos have already escaped the video ends with two kids coming across Josh's drums and a Bandido jacket as the Bishops walk up it leaves you on a little bit of a cliffhanger what's going to happen to these kids who knows I wonder if we'll see more from them later the levitate video doesn't really give us much I'll be honest it's kind of just them performing in a cool location it starts off with Tyler and Josh and the rest of the Bandidos walking down a cliff they're all just following each other they've got their torches they get to a camp shave Tyler's head there are cool visuals of vultures it looks like the Bandidos did successfully help get Tyler out of Dima and now he's able to lead them but by the end of the video Bishop hands come up from behind Tyler and pull him back he can never seem to escape they always get him in the end he stares blankly off into the distance as they drag him away he's not fighting he's not resisting he's just given into this and that's really all I have to say for that video on September 12th 2018 the band does their first live performance of some of the songs from trench and the show was called a complete diversion a little bit of a call back to one of the lyrics from the song Nico and the diners which says start a concert a complete diversion it is literally what they are doing some people also noted how that line seems to maybe reflect what happens in the heathen's music video of creating a diversion with Josh playing the drums and then getting everybody out but we're not we're not going to build the lore from the heathen's video I just can't put myself through that but it also does seem to line up with that suspicious letter that we got earlier 0807 Moon 05 that detailed a plan to divert attention away from the annual assemblage in order to step through but again that letter was vague and unclear and we don't really know what the plan was or who the group was but there are things that are happening and they're kind of combining the real world with the story on October 5th 2018 trench was released along with a music video for one of the songs on it my blood but there's not really much to say for that I feel like it was maybe their most normal music video that I've ever seen and I didn't even watch it until after I had finished everything for this video because I didn't even know that it was there like I have not seen anything about it but it just seems like a completely normal video and maybe that's just because they're not the main characters or they're not the only characters for once and I guess you could tie it into the lore but it's not it's not really like a big thing it's just a cool video honestly we're just going to move past that though we're just going to talk about trench because this is this is it we had Glory face we set up that initial character now we get the world I'm going to be referencing more from the interview with Zan low because I just love that interview but when Tyler was asking about the process of going from the character of blurry face to creating this entire world he explained that he started working on it right around the time that the eye closed and the world that he started to build completely consumed him which I related to because once I started getting into this world and researching everything I also could not do anything else I was so fully immersed in understanding everything and I can only imagine how much greater that feeling would be if you're the one creating it he wanted to build on who blurry face has become and he explained that the album is shaped a lot by fan and interactions because he watches what happens online he watches all the theories and he can incorporate that into what his ideas are the fans build the world and then Tyler gives it back to us it's all a big Mutual creative process and I think that's so great blurry face started off as just a character to represent insecurity but now it transitioned to something that has jurisdiction over certain mental SL physical places in this case The Bishop's controlling demma and he explains that for his mental process he can try to stay away from those places where the bad feelings have jurisdiction by staying away from those places you're giving that feeling less control so like trying to escape diema trying to escape the Bishops it's scary and it's wild but it's also creative and free and those are the things that you have to work for even if it's hard I remember when this album came out fans were a little bit skeptical of the whole aesthetic because it's so different from what was but it's grown on people over time and also after a whole year of nothing we were kind of just desperate the whole album is really good at continuing their style while also blending new techniques and building the world and still being enjoyable for casual listeners it just works well for a lot of different people and for a lot of different reasons it was just such a relief to feel their presence again let's get into the lyrics the album starts off with the songs jumpsuit and levitate both of which we've already heard from the music videos jumpsuit starts with the phrase cover me which is something we had seen from Clancy's letters I will say there are lots of lyrics that reference Clancy letters or maybe Clancy letters that reference lyrics either way I'm probably not going to catch them all but I did try to make note of what I could because I think that's such a cool detail to add if there are any that I forget to mention please let me know because they make me so happy to see in the bridge of jumpsuit Tyler sings that he'll be right there but you'll have to grab his throat and lift him in the air and also break both his hands which as we've seen with the black paint and the spearing and everything his throat and His Hands these are the two things that he uses to be creative his singing and also his writing or playing instruments or whatever this is how he expresses himself the lyrics to levitate have a fun little reference to car radios saying I got back what I once bought back in that slot I won't need to replace to count our car radios I have those thoughts so often I ought to replace that slot with what I once bought the song also references vultures which is a visual that we see throughout this album and also most notably on the cover on the actual album cover is a giant picture of a vulture and the song ends with welcome to trench which is obviously a huge phrase right it's inviting us into this entire world the third track is called morph and it talks about turning into somebody else but also the bigger question of what happens when you die and this song gives us a lot this song Hands us so much information about the world so the main message of the song is I'll morph to someone else I'm just a ghost defense mechanism mode but then it goes into some name dropping and some storytelling he says that Nicholas borachi AKA Nico aka the bishop that was chasing him down tries to stop him which we have obviously seen already from the jumpsuit video but who is Nicholas borachi kind of a weird name to just throw out there and it was a real name it does come from something he didn't just make that up Nicholas bbak is a real name from the 1930s but it is not the name of one person it's a group of nineish people seven to nine people they were mathematicians you might remember there was a mathematician mentioned earlier the craft picture from one of the earlier Clancy letters is a cropped image of one of the mathematicians that was a part of the Nicholas barachi group it all ties together that was just a little teeny tiny reference to something much bigger this group is known for a lot of things one of them being the empty said o which is the thing that the band was kind of known for for the blurry face album that was how they marked a lot of their stuff the o with the dash across that you see in their album cover and also the way that most of us typed in 2015 let's be real but the barbach group took that symbol from the Norwegian alphabet and used it to denote the empty set also big words here the group had an axiomatic view of topology properties that are preserved over various deformations what the object was is what the object will be regardless of how it is changed I'll morph to someone else but you're still Tyler the whole idea kind of mocks what Tyler is singing about he's singing about how he'll morph into somebody else he'll just become a different person but this Theory and Nico Nicholas barbach the whole thing ties into the idea that what you were is what you will be it was also around this time that people started to theorize that Tyler is Clancy he's morphing into somebody else and maybe that somebody else is Clancy a whole new identity but going back to the album as a whole where blurry face was a lot more on personal insecurity and internal struggles I feel like this album is a lot more about collaboration and mutual support lines like you don't need to run stay with me my blood nice to know my kind will be on my side lean on my pride I'm a lion all of these lines are talking about going to other people for support and lifting each other up and working together and obviously the Bandidos what we've been seeing from the videos it's all group work chlorine tells this pretty literal story within I plan my escape from walls they canined obviously Tyler is planning to escape DEA through the literal walls and that song also has the line Rebel red carnation maybe Rebel red like the blurry face era we will see the new album that's coming out also features red so maybe that color in general to represent the rebellion and the outro of this song is very special it says I'm so sorry I forgot you let me catch you up to speed it feels like it's a direct call out to the listeners saying hey I'm sorry that this story has been going on and you haven't been a part of it let me tell it to you he's specifically saying sorry to the fans that have felt abandoned for the past year he's finally laying it all out for us letting us see where he's been I will say Smither isn't necessarily worth talking about we won't mention it again because it is just Bruno Mars's grenade but for Tyler it is his obligatory love song Moving on beond gravestones on the other hand I would argue is maybe the most important song of This Album I love this song I think it's a little bit cheesy I didn't like it at first and I still sometimes I think it's a little bit cringe to listen to but once you understand how real of a message it is is I guess like how much they believe in that message it's so special even if it is a little straightforward I do think we need this type of messaging that is so straightforward about this topic but I'm getting ahead of myself The song Neon gravestones is also very important for explaining what actually goes on in diema the song calls out the glorification of suicide in just our society in general but also in this world this band talks about mental health struggles and insecurity and they talk about fighting suicidal urges or whatever like that's been a big theme of their music stay alive that's what they always say he says that he could go out with a bang but they'll say how could he go if he's got everything they'll mourn for a kid but won't cry for a king Society loves to talk about tragedies after they've happened but they're also really quick to blame those who have taken action if they deem the circumstances inadequate if you're somebody who has a lot of power or who's older or is just in a better place or at least from what other people can see they'll say how could you do that how could you take it all for granted how could you let this all go we react when life is cut short we say that it's such a tragedy or we judge the person for doing what they did rather than celebrating lives well- lived highlighting those who have had long lives and showing the joy that can come from that instead we talk about death so much if somebody takes their own life that becomes the focus of them rather than the life that they did live so we get to a point in society and as we will see in Dima where you almost want to do that in order to get the attention because it feels like that's the thing right the whole glorification of suicide that's what this song is about a lot of critics when they listen to this album found this track to be disturbing and they said maybe this shouldn't be on here because maybe this song itself glorifies suicide but I don't think so at all I think this is maybe the most important song because it is such a direct call out to the very real issue this is exactly what the band has been creating content about since the beginning but also from the title neon gravestones where have we seen Neon Lights before maybe when the Bishops were doing their little crafting earlier and guess where those neon gry Stones go oh outside the entire perimeter of the city we're slowly making our way to the bigger explanation of what all is going on here Tyler explained that the song The Hype is meant to be for a younger version of himself more conversation of struggling with both internal and external pressure to fit certain ideas of what he should be doing but ultimately it's just encouragement to keep going Nico and the ners we already saw from the music video but this does direct tell us more story because obviously Nico and the ners the song starts off with some reversed audio that says we denounce violism you will leave Dima and head true East we are Bandidos it also starts with the phrase East is up so these are all things we've seen before more talk about being a rebel he says that dimma doesn't control them which is something we saw in 0807 Moon 05 they don't control us now it's dimma don't control us Bandido is a song from The Rebel group showing how the Bandidos support each other with lines like either way it helps to hear these words Bounce Off Of You the softest Echo could be enough for me to make it through sounds kind of weird out of context but it's a song where the Bandidos are saying they will support each other they will get through this together this song also has the repeated phrase solo Felina which I haven't seen an explanation of what this actually means I don't know if there is an official one or if there's one that can be figured out or if it's one of those things that just has a meaning to the band that is separate from anything we will ever understand some people have theorized that it translates to enable creative Creations others notice an anagram of all Ohio fans there are lots of different theories that float around Tyler explained that solo Felina is what we cry out in trench when we are in need it's a phrase used by Bandidos to support each other or to call out for help regardless of if there is some greater meaning that's what it means in this story another really really important line from the song Bandido is I created this world to feel some control destroy it if I want at the end of the day no matter how invested we are in the songs in the story in anything that comes next you have to remember that it's all just it's all just some idea from some guy and yes he did build it off of our ideas and yes he did make it for us but it's also his world it's also not a real world you have to remember that so at any point he can change any details he can make the story go however he wants it to there's a line I could take the high road but I know that I'm going low which I like it for three different reasons the first is it works for lore because the phrase typically means choosing revenge over the righteous option going low like going for it which could describe how the Bandidos are going to go against Dima by any any means necessary two it could literally be talking about how the Bandidos are going low they're escaping diema by maybe going under the walls but three it talks about how the band is staying low rather than going up into mainstream media they're staying low and doing what they do I also wrote fun fact about this song is that Tyler had been working on it in the early blurry face tour so even if the world wasn't fully formed at that time which I have already been talking about how I don't think stuff was planned that far back the ideas were starting pet chea is just a really cool song there's not much to say about it we did obviously get that cheetah GIF earlier but it's not really significant it's just a really cool song I love the idea that you can challenge writer's block and still be able to put out something that is so cool and that brings us to the last two songs of the album we have Legend which is a song for Tyler's grandfather who had passed and that song just feels like a genuine expression of emotion it doesn't seem like there's much to take from that it was just him talking to somebody he cared about and then the album ends with the song Leave the city obviously that's going to be story based leaving DEA the city Tyler sings that the burning is so low it's concerning and when it goes out it's a glorious gone where have we seen the word glorious before from the letters we've seen the annual assemblage of glorified glorified and the Glorious the Glorious gone and that also reminded me of 0807 moon 01 where clinty mentioned how the light in people's eyes was strangled by the darkness of Bishop's hands the low light is concerning and when it goes out it's a glorious gone the Bishops take the light from people's eyes do you see where we're going going with this the Bishops put out the light in people's eyes and when the light goes out the glorified is gone are the glorified in the assemblage already dead or are they dying also from neon gravestones we glorify those even more so if all of this is talking about glorifying suicide and there are the glorified what is this assemblage for exactly he sings he will leave the city but for now he'll stay alive the song ends with him saying that he needed a change of pace because he couldn't keep up which could be talking about how the speed of Glory face was just a little bit too much and they needed a break while he's far from home he's not alone in trench and the final line says these faces facing me they know what I mean similar theme to what we saw from the other songs of only few will understand he's saying there's certain people out here that just get it and Tyler has explained that this song is talking about any point where somebody finds himself in between two places you don't know what to expect but you have to start this journey you have to go somewhere there's not a clear destination there's not a clear answer for what you should be doing but you have to start moving on October 16 16 2018 the first of 115 shows for the Bandido tour started and I will say with all of this new music to unpack we kind of got a whole album dropped on us there wasn't much lore for a little while here in December the band put out an interactive Spotify Bandido experience where you could go through Dima but there wasn't really much to find about that it's kind of just a cool thing for those who are able to experience it January 22nd 2019 gives us the release of the Chlor music video and also our first introduction to Ned the choran video seems to exist outside of at least this the physical world of trench and dimema but the ideas and the characters do still eventually tie in the video starts off with the perspective of something peering around the corner looking at Tyler and Josh and then we get our first look at Ned we watch Tyler and Josh slowly filling up a pool but Ned is not satisfied and judging by the song's title they're filling it with chlorine Ned just wants a pool full of chlorine and they're not giving him enough eventually Ned is satisfied with their efforts and he jumps into the pool throughout the video Tyler is also seen holding a cup of something but he never drinks it at the end of the video he offers that cup to Ned but Ned also doesn't seem satisfied with it I'll be honest I don't know that much about Ned he does have his own merch shop which is just full there's so much why is there so much for just him the shop is called Ned's buou and from that merch you can see that Ned stands for neuro expansion device which may be a good thing or maybe not he's really cute so I do want to believe that he's a friend but I don't know what he's doing the band has talked about how Ned represents creativity and trying to appease it how Ned had saved them and shaped the record because they worked to create what felt good with their creative judgment which is what Ned would approve of the same day that the chlorine video is released we also get a letter from Clancy titled 0901 Moon 22 it's tighted which is different it immediately lets us know that clany is back in Dima he had been considering it earlier saying that it was something familiar and maybe he followed through with that I wrote here just as my own little side note I keep thinking about how dimma and blurry face represent insecurity and mental illness and it makes me so sad to see how Clancy chooses or Tyler is forced back or whatever it is they end up back at what is comfortable and familiar even though it's draining and it's kind of unlivable in this letter there's a hidden message from specific letters that are doubled up when you take those all out it spells so deep Ned byou which Ned's Bayou is Ned we saw that from the merch in this letter Clancy writes about his confusion he doesn't know what home is anymore was it a good idea to return to Dio should he have stayed out and fought it out in the unknown did he give up by coming home he was afraid of the bishop in trench but he tried to interpret the situ situation in different ways where maybe ni this bishop that he was watching maybe the bishop wasn't evil it wasn't menacing it wasn't threatening maybe this bishop was doing the right thing by trying to keep Tyler safe by trying to take him home trying to justify it to allow yourself to feel okay about the place that you're in it's really sad to read because he was so happy when he was finally free he writes that he's consumed with the unknown but he found a home within the confines of diema and the letter ends with Clancy saying there is still so much I do not understand and it pains me to say that this is the last time we will hear from Clancy for a while July 26th we get a music video for the hype the whole video feels homey and cozy again it kind of feels like a normal video where they're just guys hanging out rather than characters in this bigger story and it's yeah that's it December 13th 2019 is the end of the Bandido tour but it is definitely not the end of cryptic content after a quick break for the holidays we get a new song and video on April 9th titled level of concern and this song isn't really in a specific album so we'll just talk about it individually the video was posted April 2020 so right when things started heating up in the world when things were looking a little bit scary and people were a little bit lonely it's pretty simple it's just Tyler performing back and forth with Josh they're both isolated and then by the end of the video you see that they're living right next to each other but they're just having fun but it was playing on the whole thing that was going on at the time in the world where everybody was feeling a certain way on the surface this video seems like a personal intimate little glimpse into their friendship and their home lives you just get to see a little bit more of them as people and I feel like the song and the video captured that time in a way that's really comforting to look back on even though in the moment obviously it was really scary but it does also show how there were little things to appreciate like Tyler had talked about how during that time he he's appreciative now because that was time that he was able to spend with his kid that otherwise maybe he would have been touring he would have been away it's just really sweet to look back on two months later the band releases an ARG and alternate reality game surrounding the song level of concern it is so intricate it is so well planned out on June 12th 2020 the band posted a live stream on their YouTube page with a hidden phone number and secret codes and I cannot even begin to explain the depth that this went into it went so far there were so many things to look out for there were 20 codes that people found in real life flash drives that got mailed to people I'm not even going to get into all of that because to be honest it's not even that relevant to the lore it was just a thing that they did I definitely recommend looking up full explanations or at least looking at the explanation video that they have up on their Channel because they did go over everything that had happened for people that weren't invested in the moment there are some little Easter eggs that tie into stuff that we're going to be talking about but for the most part it was just a cool thing that was happening at the time so I'm going to leave that there I'm going to hope that you look into it in your own time and we're going to move forward on June 21st the channel started a never-ending live stream for that video where fans could post their own videos and it would all go into this big thing and that lasted for 178 days again this was a lot more about building fan connections and just creating a fun little thing for everybody to do when things were so difficult and then on June 4th the band posted a summary of how fans Sol the codes they posted the explanation of what had happened on December 8th 2020 they released a song titled Christmas saves the year which at first it seems like a friendly little holiday song nothing to see here but upon further inspection fans started to notice something off about specifically the single cover the music video came out a year later and has a lot of little Easter eggs in it we're not even going to talk about that because that's again kind of just another fun thing but the single cover for Christmas saves the year I have no clue how people found such detailed images of this because I cannot see it for the life of me but on the present in the background is the name Clancy the present in the background is a dress to Clancy and also on the wrapping paper is the words s is propaganda although at the time we didn't know what s was which considering we didn't know that I have no clue how people were able to read that and understand it as letters because I cannot I cannot see it what technology are people using where they have such a clear image of this I don't know this didn't really mean anything to us at the time it was kind of just a confusing hidden message but it would soon come to shape the way that we saw the next 2 years on April 2nd 2021 the website where we were getting Clancy letters switched to a message saying terminating files before turning Black 3 Days Later over those 3 days there was a loading bar on the page but also all of the letters were inverted with the exception of the three that were already inverted so we have the weird letter that I didn't get good vibes from we have the Dima map and then we have the image of Tyler in the jumpsuit video one thing to note is that the map of Dima originally had a warm tint to it but when they inverted it it became just solid black and white there was no blue tint to it tiny little detail don't know if it means anything but it's not what it should have been also the image of those dashes that layered over the other letter later they were not inverted to the color that they should have been with the bright yellow color that we had it should have turned to a deep blue but instead it turned to kind of a more cyan color which means it was inverted from Red tiny little details just little things that were off about the inversions after those 3 days the loading bar reached the end and the page switched to say account terminated it explained that the content we had been seeing was deemed Contraband by the sacred Municipality of dimma which is the same Authority that we saw from the map this message comes with an infraction number which when you translate it to letters spells out clency is dead and if you just happen to scroll your mouse over one of the letters of the account terminated message you would get to one of three posters being presented these posters promoted an upcoming live stream from the band on May 21th first there are lots of little details to make note of about these posters such as the production of dmaorg FP now stands for future Performance Event and there is still more messaging saying Clancy is dead the posters look like old advertisements maybe from the 80s they're bright and they're exciting and they're appealing to what we would typically see but it almost feels like the band is being sold as the products we're not being sold the album we're being sold them that same day the official blurry face Twitter announced that the new record is called failed and [Music] [Music] icy scaled and I we have temporarily left the realm of trench April 7th brings us both the official album announcement and also a music video for the song shy away the album cover has an image of a dragon and the following day Tyler announced that the dragon's name is trash there are some hidden things within trash the dragon that some people noticed like the word destroy is hidden in his scales and also some people noticed I don't know how some people notic that there's a street in his scales that is the same place that Tyler grew up on or the same place where the gond music video is and also that little street is called Clancy way which I don't think we're meant to get anything from that I think it's a fun little Easter egg for people who noticed but I am scared of whoever did notice that and then April 30th we get a music video for the song choker there's not much that we get from the shy away music video it's mostly just Tyler and Josh performing there are neon lights they're in front of a gas station but nothing really happens there's one location where there's a dragon in the background the scene changes a couple times but overall it's a fairly scaled back music video no pun intended we're just going to keep moving the choker music video has a lot of little Easter eggs but it's not set in the world that we've been seeing so it's not directly tied to anything again there are lots of theories as to how what's in that music video could represent certain things within this bigger trench storyline but it's just a fun music video Tyler walks into a shop Josh is behind the counter Josh zaps his dog and turns it into a little minifigure and then Tyler tries to steal a figurine of a dragon and as he's running Josh hunts him down and then zaps him and turns him into a figure as well I know there are theories about what this could say about Josh as a character in the story or I don't I don't even know if you are interested in all the possible meanings and hidden little Easter eggs within their music videos I definitely suggest that you go look into full Deep dive videos because there are people putting out videos for every single thing that they've ever put out breaking down every single music video and every single lyric and I'm sure there are people that are going to do it way better than I could everything from trench felt so serious we're fighting this big government and the whole city is terrible and all these bad feelings and then this this just felt lighter and that's something that we're going to see from the rest of the album because on May 21st we get the release of the scaled and icy album and also the live stream experience because if you remember when the letters page turned to say account terminated there were hidden posters for a live stream experience that was going to be on May 21st which is also the release date for the album and I will say we have a lot to go through here just with the scaled and IC album people had very mixed reactions when they first heard it because it's so different like I was saying everything feels lighter yes there are still some darker lyrics but trench and Glory face just they they hit different you know this one was not doing the same thing this album felt lighter but it also felt commercialized it felt like it was doing the whole thing that they had been talking against this whole time of going mainstream it just didn't sound like them in a new interview with Zay low where he was talking about skel and icy he talks about how trench was about pushing boundaries and playing around and seeing how abstract they could get with the sounds but this album is very much focused on staying within the parameters of what is expected and seeing what you can put out that still fits within that box trench felt very personal it felt very intimate but this album feels manufactured it feels like we're being sold something which is something that I had said earlier about the posters it feels like the band is what's being promoted rather than the music and it's at this point that I would like to remind you about that little message on the Christmas single s is propaganda scaled and icy everything about the album is bright and upbeat the saturation is all the way up and the whole Personal Touch that we felt from their earlier music just wasn't really there critics still liked it because it's a good album objectively they just put out good music but it wasn't the same and if you knew what they were like then you know that this isn't that fans also noticed that the album title scaled and iy is an anagram of the phrase Clancy is dead which is something that had been repeated from the account terminated page and the posters and we are getting thrown this message so much it's the same thing as how earlier we were getting East is up and we were getting all of these phrases from Clancy now somebody is telling us Clancy is dead I didn't really focus on it here but that message Clancy is dead was also in the hidden level of concern puzzle that was also one of the messages there the usual three-line logo that we had seen from their past couple of albums is gone replaced with something that looks kind of like a trident and I assumed that's all it was I was like this is a weird ocean theme that we're going for but after looking into it a little bit that shape is actually a weapon which is called the Sigh and also the dragon on the album cover trash the dragon looks very similar to Walter Crane's Dragon of deception and that artist was a propaganda artist all these little details are tying together to tell us a much bigger story before we've even touched on the music itself and we could go back even farther to the song we don't believe what's on TV because most of the promotional material that we've gotten for this album has been seen on TVs the live stream experience was for a TV show it's all it all comes together little details that are all tying together it's just really fun to see how these them are still carrying through even if it's not explicitly stated as for the live stream it's such a good performance it's such a cool way to play with the new and old songs because they performed both stuff from this album and also stuff from previous albums and it really captures the energy that they have when they're doing live performances even if you can tell some's off because as we'll talk about later this live stream is not what they would normally do based in reality people are finding new ways to be creative and the live stream was a really cool way to do that specifically I love when singing about his creativity when he's singing Lane boy and the crunch on scaled back and isolated I know saying that here probably doesn't mean anything but if you have seen it then maybe you know what I'm talking about I just really liked those moments just from a performance perspective I just thought they sounded really good but then also looking back at it at how specifically those lines tie into everything that's happening it just it all seemed to work out in the live stream there are two hosts and throughout the entire live stream you can see them slowly decomposing they just look less put together their sentences start to make a little bit less sense and their eyes are all yellow and red and just they look unwell and there are times where Tyler will start to sing some of their old stuff and then he gets cut off and then he's forced to sing stuff from scaled and icy it just doesn't look like there are very many willing participants in this live stream it feels very forced again very commercialized manufactured it doesn't feel genuine really from anybody even from the people that are hosting it they don't feel like they want to be there at all without explaining the entire thing that's the idea Tyler is performing for these guys he doesn't really seem like he wants to do it they don't really seem like they want to be there I'm sure you can find it somewhere online if you want to see the whole thing it's just also good performances of their songs but scaled and iy is out so let's talk about some of the lyrics the first song on the album is titled good day and Tyler explained that he wrote this song knowing it was going to be the opening number and he said he wanted it to feel like you're in a big warehouse and the lights are turning on but also the lyrics are really dark the song sounds happy it sounds up beat but the lyrics are really dark and he said that he had written it about what if he woke up one day and his family was gone this imagined scenario where he wakes up and he lost his entire family and this feeling of being so deep in denial that you're just pretending it's the greatest day ever overly leaning into these other feelings in order to cope with whatever terrible thing is going on because that's probably the worst thing that you could imagine he's a new dad he's fresh into this family life and then to imagine all of that being taken away out of nowhere that would suck so bad and this song is about that and it sounds how it does the very first line says I can feel my saturation Leaving Me Slowly which completely contrasts with what we've seen from the album which is so overly saturated he wrote shy away as a song to motivate his brother to get into music I feel like it's one of those more personal songs rather than something that gives us Story the outside starts with the line I'll tape my eyes so I don't fall asleep again which is interesting because if you remember from before the Hiatus all the lines were about going to sleep you're still sleeping time to wake up so he's saying I'll tape my eyes so I don't fall asleep again again it's kind of a little bit of a call back to that time and as we will see this line also maybe comes up in the future and this song could also be going back into that idea of fitting into mainstream again this is something that comes up through a lot of their music is trying to stay in their own bubble and trying to Branch out and the constant pressure that they feel at one point they were topping the charts with blurry face those songs were so so popular but the music industry moves really quick and maybe he's moving outside of what's popular now maybe he's not up there anymore Tyler did talk about how he wanted this album to sound less itic than the other ones he didn't want the lyrics to have so much hidden meaning behind them he was just focused on putting out good songs and I'm sure there are still ways to take out a lot from these songs even though he says that he wasn't trying to do it but I'm just touching on the things that I know come up later I'm trying to focus on the big stuff I don't know I I just I feel so bad for potentially missing something I don't want to accidentally skip over something that somebody thought was really important but I'm just one guy I can't do it all never take it has the line they keep lying through their fake teeth which maybe could be talking about about the Bishops because the song also says they're trying hard to weaponize you and I we still don't really know what the Bishops do we obviously know that they smear people and that there are the glorified we know that they do something that is not great but we don't know the specifics of violism yet you can tell that it's not a great thing but I feel like we haven't really gotten that much information about what it is so it's kind of hard to take these lyrics and to tell you what you need to know with them because I feel like we're not at that point but it's just something to keep in mind that those lyrics might be be important also that phrase goes along with the letter 02203 Moon 17 which we'll see in a little bit this album is only 11 songs their other albums are like 14 but the last two have a very different vibe from the rest of them they're a lot less light and a lot less fun the 10th song is no chances which by the way side notes seeing that song live oh it's so good that song was meant to be performed live but this song says we come for you no chances which is something that we also heard the hosts in the live stream saying because like I said the live stream was presented like a TV show so there are two TV hosts and one of the things that they say in it is that line moving on to the last song of skiled and icy we have redecorate and this song starts with a line that was in one of the earlier Clancy letters it says there was a wonderful structure to the city and it put my cares to rest which some people say that this song is either about or from Clancy which makes the whole thing so much sadder it has the same Vibe if you know mitsky last words of a shooting star this song is that it also seems to include the experiences of multiple people the song starts off with taking inventory of his life but then each verse seems to be talking about different people the second one says she had plans to change her name just not the traditional way so we have different people but also changing your name not in the traditional way to me that line was transcoded but that's that's just me I've also seen people explain it in probably a more rational Way by saying that the traditional way would maybe be to get married or at least to change your name legally so to change your name not in the traditional way would be to maybe use a secret name or a code name or something like that and this song also brings us the line scaled back and isolated which is a longer version of the title scaled and icy on July 8th 2021 we get a music video for the song Saturday I didn't really talk about that song but it's a pretty upbeat party type of song and in this music video we get what appears to be a group of Bishops running around on a ship and Tyler and Josh are performing there are a group of people that are being led onto the ship and then it goes under the water we see Tyler and Josh with a band performing for this group of people as they travel underwater and then a little bit past halfway through the video there's a giant serpent in the Water behind them that crashes into the ship the dragon had glowing yellow eyes which I'm going to talk about a lot because earlier we saw that the host of the live stream had yellow eyes but this dragon with yellow glowing eyes crashes into the ship and breaks it open and Tyler drops and some of the members of the party are able to swim to the surface of the water where the dragon swims under them instead of continuing the attack it just seems to move on at first glance to me at least this video brought a lot more questions than answers but you don't get a clear explanation until almost a year later stuff like where were they performing who is this group of people why did the dragon attack why did the dragon not continue its attack what do the glowing eyes mean there are lots of things here that you don't really know that much I'm sure you could piece some things together together at this point if you've been following along pretty closely if you've been taking your notes you may you may be able to figure some things out and then the Takeover tour which was 35 show starts on September 21st March 16th 2022 is a very exciting day because dma or the website that had been account terminated for at this point almost a year finally got all of its content back plus a new post 02203 Moon 16 has a larger map of the continent of trench which is showing more of the world than we had ever seen before there's ay that shows us that we are still oriented with East being up and you can see that above Dima above the city of Dima is the entire continent of trench and below that is Port vile which could be inspired from the name vialism and then southeas is leads to an island called Volo which people notice translates to Violent Island which could be a reference to the song migraine that says behind my eyelids are islands of violence so there's lots of little things Sy doce from this map and then the next day a teaser was posted for the song the outside with a letter from Clancy that detailed parts of the past couple of years 02203 Moon 17 is the first post signed off by Clancy in over 3 years and it's the first time we've heard from him since all of this messaging that's saying he's dead the file name is isolated which could either be a reference to scaled back and isolated as the album as a whole or scaled back and isolated specifically from redecorate because that song could be talking from or about Clancy this letter is pretty long and it changes a lot about how we have to view everything that we've been seeing I feel like throughout trench Clancy was kind of our reliable narrator he was telling us how things were from inside of Dima he was giving us this inside perspective and once he left we just had to take everything at face value so now we're kind of getting that Insider look into what skel and iy was for him at least this letter Catches Us up on the entire past three years summarizing the entire skeleton IC process and the live stream and the music videos for both Saturday and the outside which we haven't even gotten a music video for the outside yet but this letter very much sets us up for it it starts off by saying that the Bishops took away Clancy's ability to write which immediately reminded me of the line in jumpsuit that talks about you'll have to break both of my hands taking away this creative expression they took away his ability to write these letters and to get his word out to whoever he was writing to because that's another thing is we don't really know who those letters were for or maybe they were just for himself and somebody found them I don't I don't know regardless they had taken away his ability to write he was led through the halls of dimma and encountered a blue door and he was led into a room where he was allowed to create and this was the only place he was allowed to create things in the Bishops proposed that clency begins working on stuff for a TV show but he was being controlled in this way because he had been known for his schemes and his Outburst from within the city and that struck me as being pretty odd because from what we know of Clancy he's kind of reserved he was pretty scared he didn't know what he was getting into or where he was going and when he saw Nico and Tyler and everything that went on in trench he was pretty afraid and he was timid and he didn't really know what he wanted to do so the idea that now Clancy is somebody who's having outbursts and schemes and he's well known throughout the city either he's changed a lot in the past 3 years or this is not the same person every day Clancy is Led through this blue door and into his designated creative space and the blue door is never mentioned in any of their songs but it is seen in some of the concert promotional material they also come out of it when they are actually performing on stage but I also found the phrase designated creative space to be pretty significant because it feels so contradictory to be confining imagination to say you can create but only if it's right here it just it doesn't feel right on show day they had him dress up but everything about the show was a blur of colors and chaos and he was very quickly returned to his cell dimma decided that Clancy was useful and requested that he perform at the annual assemblage of the glorified if you're not following where we're at with the actual timeline the show that they're talking about maybe was the the live stream that had happened the TV show and now the annual assemblage of the glorified we can see is the Saturday music video where Tyler is performing on the ship in front of this group of people and it is a small detail but it's worth noting that in the previous letter where they had mentioned the annual assemblage assemblage was spelled with an a BL a g in this letter it's spelled b e dge so it's a tiny detail and it could just be that the person writing was in a hurry or misspelled something human error these things happen but it also could mean that somebody else is writing this somebody else is spelling it and they spelled it different way we have the line I knew those weren't the real Bishops on that ship but it was crossed out on the page maybe he just didn't want to follow that line of thought because he had to keep moving through the letter because it also tells us that the people that were on that ship that were running the show are not the real Bishops but they were people dressed up as Bishops he writes that he needs to keep up with the torch Bearer which from pretty much all of the music videos you've seen the Bandidos carrying torches with them but specifically Josh we'll see this in the future content but Josh normally has a torch and he's also kind of the one leading the Bandidos I know at one point I did say that it seems like Tyler is sort of in control and that Tyler is leading them but even before Tyler was there Josh still very much seemed like he was the one in control he's the one that came up and confronted Tyler when they were making their escape and he's the one that's walking down the cliff with them like he's always at the front of this group and yes he is sometimes alongside Tyler but before Tyler was there he was still in charge I'm only saying that because it feel like so much of this conversation is surrounding Tyler because he's the one that writes the music he's the one that puts it out he's the one that came up with a lot of this story and I don't want to make it seem like we're just not talking about Josh at all because Josh is also obviously a part of the band and he is a part of the story he's in the music videos like he is his own character and I don't want to make it seem like he's unimportant I just don't want anybody watching this to feel like I'm completely disregarding him because that's not the case but anyways back to the letter and the Saturday music video while performing on the ship there was an attack that left a lot of people injured or killed but Clancy was spared we already know of somebody that was pretty confident in their escapes and we know of somebody that was sort of Le leading the Bandidos leading the rebels and we know of somebody that was performing on a TV show and we know of somebody that survived the Saturday attack clency writes that he washed up on an island and had a feeling that this new area would give him some much needed answers the letter is signed off in usual Clancy fashion but something obviously something is different right this doesn't seem like the same Clancy that we've been reading from and that's because when we were reading about the description of the jumpsuit music video from Clancy he was an observer he was looking down into trench and he was watching as Tyler was getting approached by Nico and he could explain how his feelings were without knowing anything about the situation down there in this letter however it seems like we're getting a direct account of everything that happened from Tyler's perspective but it's still signed off as Clancy there are also little details like some fans had pointed out inconsistencies with the handwriting like an I being cursive versus not in different letters I didn't see it as enough of an inconsistency to point out like all the specifics here but it is something to think about and then obviously we have the misspelling of assemblage and we have the different descriptions of the characters and of the inter like everything before pointed to Clancy being somebody other everything from this points to Tyler being Clancy but the big idea is not that Tyler has always been Clancy because as we saw from the jumpsuit thing Clancy was somebody else Clancy was looking down and being this third person Observer rather than being Tyler in the moment so this letter leads to the idea that Tyler became Clancy that maybe Tyler is using Clancy as a pseudonym or maybe m multiple people are using it that Clancy is just this bigger identity which then obviously brings the question of why is Tyler doing this or specifically why is he doing it now and what does it mean for him and what happened to the real Clancy the one that we had grown attached to from the earlier letters and I will say my one confusion that comes from this letter is when Clans is writing about the Bishops because he writes that he recognized Keon from his voice and seemed relieved that he was around and L makes note of the fact that one of the Bishops seems to always be missing and that he would have sensed him if he was around and that part is confusing to me because Clancy knows who Keon is because that's his Bishop that's the one that he grew up with or the one that he respected and the one that he worked for all of that I don't know if Tyler knows the rest of the Bishops and I don't know why Tyler would make note of Keon specifically so that for me felt like the old Clancy that's the one part that feels like the old Clancy but the rest doesn't align with what we know so it's just it's just it's a lot to consider right but clearly something has changed here on March 18th we get two posts to the Clancy website as well as the music video for the song the outside post 02203 moon8 is an image titled weapon with an illustration of a figure holding antlers over their head it is a handwritten things there's lots of little tiny details scattered across the page but one of the images has a caption that translates to psychokinesis and bottom text that says sees available vessel at Volo Eastern Cove intercept Bishops glorious gone equals available vessel Bishops control the available vessel intercept and seize they will make you a weapon if the glory is gone are glorified who have died maybe specifically by Bishop hands and the glor is gone are available vessels even this alone gives us a lot of context for maybe what violism is or what the Bishops are working towards right there are also letters in the top corner of the image which if you unscramble them it says sees kons so things are not looking so good for the fourth right bishop and then a couple hours after this document was posted we get the outside video and a letter from Clancy starting with the song the outside is the final music video that we get from this album and it also came way later than everything else but it wraps up the visuals for this album and it also sets us up for everything that stick come it starts off by reminding us of the Saturday music video where we see the dragon with the yellow eyes and then this Fades to one of the Bishops also with glowing yellow eyes holding antlers above his head in the same way that we saw from the drawing a couple hours earlier we watch as this bishop gets surrounded by the other eight and then they attack and kill him which also we see that this seems to kill the dragon both of their glowing yellow eyes go out and I'm going to spoil something here just looking back because maybe it was obvious I had no clue and I don't know how people possibly could know this but I don't know I just assumed that this bishop was Nico this bishop that we see being killed is Keon I don't know if that CES Keon's message is the only thing that we got that would let us know that that was specifically Keon's but it seems like holding these antlers gives the Bishops the power to control or connect in some way with something else because when he died the dragon died as well or at least it looks that way and when you think about what this means from the previous music video if the yellow eyes means that the dragon is being controlled by kons kons drove that Dragon into the ship that was being run by people who were looking like Bishops and we know from the other letter that they were not the actual Bishops right but it was a bishop run ship and kons went against them and controlled a dragon to destroy it and obviously that means he was also saving cleansy it tells us a lot about kons but also about the bishop power the music video for the outside starts with Tyler crawling out of the ocean and onto an island which if you remember from the last letter that we got that's exactly what he said was happening so we already got this idea where clency had said that he felt like this is where he was going to get some answers Josh walks over throws him a hat and starts pulling him to his feet before Leading The Way with his torch follow the torch Bearer here he is they see Ned from the choran video they see Ned and they chase him through the Wilderness until it gets dark out where they find a cave hidden in the side of a mountain I saw some people saying that they heard the sounds from migraine here which I I have no clue but that would be because violent Island I personally didn't hear it but that would be a cool little Easter egg if it was there Tyler comes across multiple Neds as he's going into this cave and he chases them through tunnel until he reaches a campfire that's surrounded by eight of them and Tyler seems to feel comfortable he's not afraid that there are eight Neds which most of us would be because who is Ned imagine just encountering one of those but Tyler is chill with it he sits down at the campfire with them he shares a drink there's one more Ned that runs from a different passageway so that gives us nine total nine Neds nine Bishops interesting Tyler gets up and follows the ninth outside and then we can see that that Ned has antlers that are similar to what was being used by the bishop to control the Dragon and also what we saw from the drawing and it is worth mentioning that he's the only one with horns which makes me wonder did he grow them back after that Bishop died like all the other Neds had antlers but they're being used by the surviving Bishops and this one got his back because his Bishop had died regardless this one has antlers he takes them off and he offers them to Tyler Tyler takes them and there are Neds surrounding him up on the cliff that show him how to use it by holding it up to his head they're all encouraging him to use this power and then Tyler controls the body of the Fallen Bishop so it seems like this power is allowing people to control dead bodies which also means the dragon was already dead before all of this happened Tyler possesses the body of the Fallen bishop and uses it to destroy one of the glowing pillars that had been surrounding him and then the video ends with Tyler and Josh in the dark and as they look off into the Beyond which we know they're on an island so they're looking out to the Sea and as they're looking out the Horizon fills with torch light from across the water we move away from Tyler and Josh and focus in on two figures on the other side and as they turn around and they look behind them we see that dimema is a light with blue flame which had come out of the neon pillar that Tyler Broke earlier and then at the very end this video flashes between the figures at the end end of the Nico and the Niners video with the two figures that are looking back at the city which is maybe suggesting that these are the same two people even though they don't look that similar I don't know if it's saying that these are the exact two people that we had seen before like they were left with the stuff from the Bandidos and now they've joined the Rebellion or if it's just suggesting that the reach has gone from that to now this whole Island full of torch light I don't know it just doesn't look like the same people but the idea is that they've allowed their Rebellion to spread this far because it's been four years since the Nico and the Niners video and they're still going the Rebellion is still growing and with this video and the ways that Ned's tied to Bishops you also have to think about what does that actually mean if Ned represents creativity and the Bishops are using those antlers for power they're taking something from the embodiment of creativity and using it as a means of control for what for themselves right like they're doing whatever they're doing for personal gain some people theorize that each Ned is the opposite of a bishop because I haven't really mentioned it it's not really super relevant but people have said that each Bishop represents a different type of negative emotion so maybe each Ned represents a different opposite positive feeling I don't really know I have no thoughts or theories on Ned so we're just we're going to I'll leave it at that you know we're going to keep going but when the music video came out we also got a letter from Clancy and this one starts off by describing the antlers and the power that we had just seen we learned that the Bishops have the ability to control bodies but for some reason this power can reach Clancy even though he's not dead there's a mention of honorable citizens who have achieved the Glorious gone in in order to act as vessels for the power of the Bishops and remember what we said about the glorification of suicide so just from that alone there are people killing themselves in order to act as available dead body vessels that the Bishops can use that's what's being encouraged here the Bishops want to control bodies they're encouraging the annual assemblage of glorified they want people to become glorious gone for their own benefit and also obviously the use of the word vessel is interesting because that was the name of one of their early albums but it doesn't it doesn't go anywhere it's just a cool thing I cannot go back and tie this all into the vessel album I just can't but also the specifically the use of the word achieved for achieved the Glorious gone is interesting because it for sure lets us know that that is the goal you are encouraged to die in order to become a vessel for the Bishops this is seen as a positive thing at least from within the city the letter points out different moments that we've seen and questions whether or not people had been seized throughout them all he points out stuff like the decaying hosts on the television show and the figures that commanded the ship they might have seemed like they were a part of The Bishop's work but really those were dead bodies that were being controlled by the Bishops the hosts in the credits were listed as Danny ldon and Sally Sarver those were the two Bishops two Bishop names right Liston and Sarver and throughout the live stream we see them getting more beaten up or maybe more rotted I don't know maybe they're dead bodies that are slowly decaying on stream he also mentions how he had the blood red Vision dreams of flying and an outof body account of the rider in the river which is confusing to me because that's talking about the jumpsuit video which I had said was confusing because how Clancy is observing Tyler and then becoming Tyler but is it saying out of body as in Tyler was still the author of that letter but he was experiencing it from somewhere I don't really understand again he wonders why the Bishops are able to seize him if he's in his original life if he's still not dead why can they control him also through this we learned that the Bishops might be immortal like they're extending their lifetimes by using these bodies and then the final paragraph of the letter says this small Eerie island has made me a weapon we both believe that we can use it to change the momentum of the war now we must return to the mainland where they should be there to receive Us in the last video he already mentioned needing to keep up with the torch Bearer and in this it says it's been years since he last spoke with them I hope they've not lost faith in the torch bearer's plan to me that seems like talking about the kids from Nico in the Niners and how they had found the stuff from the Bandidos and then hoping that they have continued the efforts of the Rebellion from within diema so that people are ready I have no clue if that's what it's talking about because we don't see what happens to those kids but from the way that it pans out and shows the flashing between the two that's what I took away at least four years has passed since the end of the NCO and the ners videos so are they still following the torch bearer's plan are they still doing what Josh wanted them to do because he's the one that left that stuff it was his drums and maybe Clancy is just hoping that they're still passionate about the cause and they're still willing to fight with the Rebellion so from this we know about the power that the Bishops have we know what they're doing what violism is and we know that the Rebellion is well on its way Clancy and the torch Bearer just have to return to the mainland where where everybody else will be willing to receive them on June 25th the Takeover tour ends but then less than a month later on August 18th the icy tour begins this stour was only 22 shows and it went until September 24th but it does hold a special place in my heart because that is the one that I went to it was a great show I had such a good time being there even though I was far away from the stage I felt like maybe that would take away from my experience but genuinely just being in the same room as everybody else was so special because like I've been saying so much of what this band does is based on the fan energy so even if I wasn't super close to the stage I was more invested in seeing how everybody else reacted to what they were doing it was really special I really if you're able to i' highly recommend going to their live shows I know they're way expensive this time but if you find yourself in a position to be able to see them live it's a great time and then this is where I have maybe the largest gap in my information because I don't know if I missed something or if they were just resting or if they were getting ready for everything they're about to drop on us but I don't have any updates here for over a year and there were random smaller performances or you know little things that they had posted but nothing really worth talking about anything that they did came with vague mentions of new music coming soon but that was about it my next update comes from November 23rd 2023 where the 21 pilots YouTube channel posted a 10hour long Neds cozy fireplace and at first this seems like another harmless little festive thing similar to the Christmas saves the year thing where when you first look at it it just seems like a little holiday content but then you look closer and there are maybe some Easter eggs the video is just playing quiet versions of their songs there's not really much to take away from the audio but f notice some hints about the story within the background I'm not going to get into all of the potential theories that people had made from what they saw here but there was a letter in the back that was written from NED there was a potential hidden release date for new content hidden within the bookshelves where the books were spaced 2 to9 February 29th there were stuff where Ned would look at the TV or the TV would be on or something and they noticed that it was at a specific time stamp it there's lots of little details here again something you can look up in your own time but the thing that people did guess correctly is the bookshelf the books two 29 February 29th and they guessed that new music or maybe something related to a new album would be coming out February 29th 2024 and I cannot believe we've made it but we're at Clancy [Music] welcome to Clancy no intricate outfit or background for this because we're in present day now we're caught up so we're kind of just going to have to see what comes next I figured we just go back to where we started but on February 15th 2024 we start seeing some more cryptic behavior from the band again after that long year off all of their older album covers on streaming services switched to have tape red duct tape over the eyes of the figures so for vessel there's red tape over both of the eyes of the grandparents for trench the vol ulture has tape over its eyes skeleton I see obviously is the dragon but blurry face has one of the circles with tape over it and if you remember each of those circles correlates with one of the Bishops and guess which Circle that one is it's kons kons who we saw killed in the outside video but it also reminded me of the line from the outside I'll tape my eyes so I don't fall asleep again which earlier we had talked about how that ties into the Hiatus and how we were going to sleep and now it's time to wake up taping your eyes so that doesn't happen again but now there is literal tape on the eyes of these figures and it was around this time I believe 1,500 random fans received actual physical mail from Clancy and diema there were four documents that got sent out with a secret message that says still alive which could be telling us that the Clancy messaging that had been saying Clancy is dead for so long maybe that's not right maybe Clancy is still alive and in these documents there were also bolded letters that represented 229 again the idea that we're getting something new on February 29th really quickly we're going to go over the physical that people received there were four papers either with messages from Dima or Clancy the first document describes an investigation into Clancy urging anyone with knowledge of where he is to come forward it's pushing the inhabitants of Dima to do their Duty and bring enemies of violism to Justice that's what the Bandidos are enemies to violism the next document addresses those who have had access to the dma or links without permission clarifying that the documents should not be disclosed without approval from the Bishops or legal Authority and this is where there are bolded letters that spell out still alive but but also on the bottom of this document has handwritten how did you find dimma org. info the big URL that we got at the very beginning the third document is the actual letter from Clancy where he says he's not as scared as he used to be he learned about The Bishop's power and he started to feel stronger and less afraid it says he hopes to inspire and to create an inferno and the hidden message in this is not spelled out so much as it is counted this is where we get the 229 each line of the message has one single bolded letter the second the second the nth the second the second the nth and if you go all the way down it's the same for the whole message and then the fourth document is another map of trench which added the Paladin straight by Volo the place in between trench and diema and then Volo where we have seen Tyler and Josh they're going to have to cross the Paladin straight to get back to the mainland and in the letter Clancy says they'll have to cross the straight to get to a Finish Line which I will say also the track list for this album has come out and one of the songs on the album is called Paladin straight and then on February 22nd one week before this Mystery Date everything was laid out for us the band releases a 4-minute video titled I am Clancy that detailed Tyler's Journey Through the world and all of the lore of the past two albums that people have been working so hard to figure out everything that's been cryptic and hidden within their content is now just put out in front of us which makes sense because if they're putting out this new album and it's entirely lore based you have to be really in it to even understand what the music is but it is pretty wild to think about how long they've been holding on to all of these secrets and how slowly they've been drip feeding into us and now they're just so so willing to put it all out there so we're going to go through this video pretty much line by line we're going to break it all down the video starts off with our narrator saying that he's stuck in a cycle and cannot Escape diema but each attempt he's slowly getting better Nico AKA blurry face is the leader of the nine Bishops that control the city and that's the one that always catches him he explains that the religion of the city is called violism and it promotes the idea that self-destruction is the only way to Paradise this is basically the core reason that the Bishops are the bad guys here and why they're rebelling because violism like we've been talking about is the glorification of suicide but we know that the real reason the Bishops are pushing this whole religion is so that they can have the dead bodies to control which again this is why I think that neon gravestones is the most important song of the trench album I know we're kind of going way back to talk about that but it just really stuck with me especially here hearing all this again because that song very much talks about something that's real in society it's trying to push us to celebrate and honor life instead and in the Nico and the ners video you can see the Bishops making glass poles and eventually these big rectangles which are the neon gravestones it seems like the foundation of the lights that we're seeing that surround the entire city they're making that and it's something that's special and it's something that's honored and something that you want to achieve the entire city is surrounded by gravestones of the glorified but it's the idea that you're worth more when you're dead the city is so dark and so sad but then you have these bright neon lights and it almost seems like that's how you're more beneficial you can do more good by being dead and obviously you're more beneficial to the Bishops that way as well because because they're able to use you but also like I was saying before the entire message of 21 Pilots has always been to fight the voice in your head that's telling you to give up over a decade this band has been talking about suicide and fighting to stay alive even when it's hard and Theon gravestones is probably the most direct conversation that we're having about that topic at least within this world but it makes me so mad to see that people were arguing and saying that that song Maybe shouldn't be on the album because that's exactly what they've been focusing on it just seems like it matters so much because everything about violism goes along with that song goes along with what they've been talking about for their entire career going back to the Clancy video it talks about how the Bishops have a power that allows them to control the bodies of others but only for those who have passed away and they can only control the bodies for a short period of time we learned that the narrator is an exception to this rule suggesting that the Bishops are able to seize him even though he's not dead which is something that we already know from the letters I mean to be fair we already know most of this from the letters it's just putting it all in one place so that we're all on the same page also I'm not sure where this came from I'm not sure who said this or why but I saw somebody mentioning how when Tyler is possessed his eyes are red versus the yellow that we've seen from everything else which maybe is because he's the exception but that explains the character with the deep voice in the blurry face album with Tyler with the red eyes and stressed out and whatever other songs I don't know if there's anything that says it more directly or if it's just that one little section that we were talking about earlier where he was piecing together all the moments that people had been seized because that's the other thing is seizing refers to possessing the other people using this power so when it said seize kons the first time I read that I thought it meant like take him like capture him but really it's saying possess him and then we get into an explanation of the music videos that we've been watching so the line I tricked Nico into taking me outside of the walls I created a fiery diversion I escaped is leading us through heavy dirty Soul where he's going in the car we can't see the driver we know now that the driver was Nico he created a fiery diversion he literally set the car on fire and then he grabbed his jacket out jumpsuit starts he escapes it says the drag path was different I saw them they watched me the Bandidos which is describing experience in the jumpsuit video Eco catches him brings him back to dimma and it says shortly after being back inside the walls my new people got me out they needed me for something which is of course describing Nico and the ners where Josh and the rest of the Bandidos come in and save Tyler they brought me back in taught me their colors but the cycle was too strong I was recaptured is showing levitate where he's sitting in their camp and then by the end of it those Bishop hands come and grab him and pull him back it's just emphasizing his inability to escape Dima they always get him in the end word got around I became known to TOA they made me perform for them is talking about scal and iy as a whole but moving into the Saturday music video all of the content that they put out during this time all of the music and all the music videos and all the performances that we saw they were all controlled by Dima in order to take advantage of Tyler the Bishops were using this leader of the rebellion and they were using his power against him it says then Nico was betrayed and I escaped again which is talking about the end of Saturday in the start of the outside where we see the Bishops killing kons because Keon had betrayed no Keon allowed them to escape from this time I found myself in a new place to they wielded From The Towers I'm kind of skipping ahead a little bit you might have to watch the whole IM am Clancy video which I would recommend because that's really the thing that tells us all of this just a little less in depth but that whole section is talking about the outside music video with Tyler washing up onto the island finding the horns and learning how to control the bodies in the same way that the Bishops have which is something that we need to talk about because the whole thing that they're fighting is violism is the Bishops using the bodies and then Tyler or Clancy or whatever is using the same power it doesn't feel right does it because who's to say that he's using this power in the correct way but anyways the final lines of this video I am a citizen I am an exception I am returning to trench I am Clancy and that brings us into this new album February 28th brings us an announcement for the upcoming single overcompensate and also a letter from Clancy the file name is Maniac clay which unscrambles to I am Clancy but there's an extra a so maybe I am a Clancy the letter goes into the experience of the rebels saying the Bandidos have lived their rebellion and a resistance is growing inside the concrete walls it's like what we were talking about earlier how while they were away the people that are still inside the city are getting ready for whatever is coming next and the letter ends with him saying that they March in the morning and the revolution will arrive with the sun again this is February 28th so we already knew that something was going to be coming the next day but this letter just confirms it and then the final letter from Clancy that I have to talk about here is 0242 moon 28 in this message there are bolded letters that spell out the word fly by and he writes that he found a way in which presumably this is into diema that the Bishops will never suspect he's able to reach those inside with eyes that see beyond he's going to teach what he's learned taking away the constructs that dimma has presented everything that he's learned from his time outside and the letter ends with the phrase we will take it back which as we know from the outside video with the Bishops and the vessels with the glowing yellow eyes when they're being seized it's possible that Tyler is going to be using this power he's using those eyes to see into the city even though physically he's not really there he's going to use the actual power of the Bishops against them and I will say these two letters aren't signed off by anybody all the other ones had been signed off by Clancy so we don't even really know for sure who's saying this but going off of everything that we know we're kind of just going to assume that it is and then the next day as predicted we get the overcompensate music video because obviously the album isn't out yet we're going to take in the lyrics and the video all at once just as they're coming out the video starts off with dialogue from other languages but it translates to a line from one of Clancy's letters 02203 Moon 18 that says the small Eerie island has made me a weapon we both believe we can use it to change the momentum of the war it's the end of one of the most recent letters that we had read where the power of the Bishops has turned him into a weapon he's going to use that against them the video starts by pinning over water and a map of Volo back to the mainland going across the Paladin straight it's showing us the journey that they're going to have to take take to get back to where everybody else is we fly into the center of the city and the phrase welcome back to trench place this makes me so happy every single time that it plays because it's just so special to hear that again to know that we were away with skild and icy and with everything that's been happening and now welcome back they're finally coming back and now they're able to take control there was a behind the scenes video where Tyler had been talking about how the big plan of everything that they were doing was always to get back to red but now to take control of that color rather than seeing it as something that they have to fight against Tyler sings the line that we had heard earlier from Bandido I created this world to feel some control destroy it if I want we see two different scenes we see Tyler and Josh in what looks like an attic or something and Tyler's wearing a mask over most of his face and the other space is Tyler and Josh in front of an auditorium full of people that are wearing gray Josh has a collar on that translates to torch Bearer as Tyler walks into the auditorium he's confident he knows how to take up space his yellow Bandido tape that he had on his shoulders has been replaced with red I'm not going to break down the entire song but I just couldn't help but talk about it because it was so cool to have new content to talk about he sings I fly by the dangerous Ben symbol which at first when he's doing this motion with his hands it kind of looks like the 21 Pilots symbol that's not what it's referring to the dangerous Ben symbol is a traffic symbol used in Europe and it is something that came from the borachi group Tyler is saying he moves without caution he flies by the dangerous Ben symbol he's maybe growing too confident and he's overcompensating for all the time that he hasn't been we're finally having the whole story wrapped up but is Tyler staying true to himself or is he overcompensating and maybe turning into somebody else in the background of the song there's also a voice saying wait what wait what which to me kind of feels like people are shocked by the direction that he's taking it feels like the listeners are taken aback by his Sudden Change in personality I fly by the dangerous Ben symbol and they're like who hold on a second in the second verse Tyler flat out says I am Clancy he's done running and he's ready to own up to the title and face whatever's coming next Dead or Alive we see another room of Tyler in front of an audience while projections of the map of Dima and other documents that we've seen pop up on the screen behind them because Tyler is teaching the citizens of Dima how they escaped the city and what it is that they're actually fighting against the crowd changes out of their gray clothes and into jackets that are similar to what Tyler is wearing but some of them have red tape some of them have yellow and I saw this theory that said the meaning behind these different colors where yellow and the Bandidos leads more towards positivity and opposition and focusing on escaping the city their priority is saving themselves rather than defeating the evil that is Dima or the Bishops on the other hand red is based on totally destroying the Bishops and starting over reclaiming that color not only to escape but to completely destroy everything that had been challenging them at the end of the video Tyler collapses in a car radio esque drop but when the citizens pull off his mask it's revealed that the person that was leading them wasn't really Tyler it was kind of just some person and there are some theories that say that maybe this is Clancy that was unmasked I don't know to me that just seems way too underwhelming to have a whole album titled Clancy and then the real Clancy that we have been following is just dead on the ground and it's just a super fast unmasking and then we move on that doesn't feel right to me but after that drop we go to the real Tyler and Josh where Tyler had been seizing this body from wherever they are they're pulling a boat out of the water presumably they're returning to the mainland and then red maybe fire shines off Tyler's face and he gives a little bit of a smile before the video Fades to black and it could mean that he's happy to be back but it also feels a little bit malicious to me like he's happy he was using that power I don't know if it's meant to be interpreted that way but it's a little bit unsettling to see because again the Rebellion is fighting against violism so it's just a little bit concerning to see Tyler using the power that is fueling that religion and the power that the Bishops have obviously it is helpful for him to be able to reach the city without being physically in there but at what point is too much at what point is he going to go too far because also who was he seizing that brings a whole other set of questions but regardless whoever it was that was a body that he had been seizing a dead body that he was controlling and then I also wrote I love the contradiction between maybe over compensate we won't hesitate to maybe overcompensate because it's performed with such confidence and he's using this power that has dominated the city for so long it seems like he's in complete control but there's also this level of uncertainty with every choice maybe and overcompensate don't go together over compensate suggests that you're just going all in you're really going for it and you're not holding back but there's still that may be it just makes the whole song feel like he is in control he is coming back but I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing on March 15th Tyler confirms on Twitter that each of the songs on the album is going to have a music video there's going to be 14 music videos that come out which is such an ambitious thing to announce and such an ambitious thing to work for but I love the idea that each element of the story is going to have visuals to go alongside it and it's going to give a much more complete picture once everything is out and then on March 27th 2024 we get the music video for the song next semester and along with this the band announced the Clancy World Tour I cannot explain to you how special the song next semester is to me within 10 days of that song coming out it became my third most listen to song out of the past 12 months this song is what got me interested in this entire topic to begin with and I genuinely have not wanted to listen to any other music besides what they're putting out since it came out the next semester video isn't set in the trench world it's just a regular everyday situation instead of deep within the city of diema the music video starts with Tyler running away from headlights before it pans to the boys performing on what seems to be a pretty intimate venue it very much feels like early 2000s Emo or alternative music and it just feels really good to watch it made me feel nostalgic for something that I hadn't experienced yet the lyrics perfectly capture that feeling of being really anywhere but just feeling really Ang anxious and I I love this song so much it fuels me up every morning it comforts me every night genuinely I cannot stop listening to it I have never connected with a song More at the chorus of the song the video cuts to Tyler standing in the middle of a street as headlights move towards him and he remembers little details of this moment in the song he sings He remembers what he was wearing he remembers yellow dashes in the street and he prayed that the headlights would take him home before the driver yelled get out of the road that feeling of wanting something to happen and being so ready to give up only to have the entire situation minimized by something who doesn't really know the dramatics of what's going on in your head to the driver you're kind of just an inconvenience in the road at the second course of the song the headlights drive past Tyler four separate times which some people said that maybe these four times symbolize the four albums because we have blurry face trench scaled and icy and then now Clancy the first two times the car drives by Tyler runs to one side for the third time he runs the other direction and the fourth time he has the cleansy mask on so blurry face and trench are following One path scal and icy went obviously a very Direction and now we're at Clancy because when he has the Clancy mask he also stares down the headlights for a while before running away in the same direction as blurry face and trench and then the video ends with Tyler walking off of the stage while playing ukulele which is kind of very much reminiscent of some of their older stuff but it is so special to have kind of a song from them that feels genuine it doesn't feel like there's much hidden within the lyrics this is a very straightforward song it very much feels like some of their older stuff more than anything else it just feels real and then the most recent news that I had gotten as of writing the script was that there was a post from Tyler where he wrote out a list of all of the songs that he had put out and fans were guessing that maybe this is going to be an eras tour type of thing where they play songs from all of their music in mid April Tyler announced that all of the music videos that are going to come out are all coming out on the same day as the album release it's all going to come out at once which was a little scary to me because Billy eyh is also coming out with an album on May 17th but she's not putting out any singles before so you're going to have a billy eish album that nobody has heard before coming out on May 17th and then you were also going to have this entire album plus all of the music videos all in one day I was very scared for the musical online space and also for what the streaming platforms would have to endure but then more recently Tyler posted on social media to announce that the album is going to be pushed back just one week and his reasoning was that it would allow for more time to get through all of the music videos that they had to do on April 25th we get a music video for the song backslide which this music video was directed by Josh which is pretty cool and I don't really feel like going too in depth on this song mostly because it came out after I had already written script and I don't really feel like going into more stuff again but there are a lot of people that are keeping up with real time updates from really everything that's been going on so if you want to see a more in-depth analysis of the music video or the lyrics there are people that are really going all in right now but I will say this music video reminded me of just how many of their music videos end up circling back around they're all big Cycles a heavy dirty Soul starts with Tyler sitting in the car and it also ends that way and then jumpsuit again brings us back to that car where he starts off by saying it's time to wake up and then at the end you see him getting into the trunk and he's in the same place that the music video had started from next semester starts off with a view of the road and then shows them performing and then at the end it goes back to the road and Tyler getting hunted down by these headlights and then backslide is Tyler at a shop and at the end of the video he goes back to that same shop everything is a big cycle everything is going around in circles in the same way that keeps trying to escape Dima but the Bishops always find him he always ends up back in the same place the song backslide I don't want to backslide to where I started from but everything keeps going around on April 26th the band posted on Twitter with a phone number to text that said NYC May 2nd which is maybe another complete diversion style of little concert it's a super exclusive early performance and the show very quickly sold out and then on April 30th a show was announced for May 7th in Berlin the first one had a code citizen the second has the code escapee people are thinking there might be a couple more shows but those are the only ones that have been announced as of recording this I will say right now it is May 2nd so that first performance that first exclusive performance is happening today we're basically caught up in the story right now I've talked about everything that has come out so we're going to wrap up by speedr running some theories that I've heard or that I've liked and we're going to talk about my final thoughts and then we'll get out of here I will say I do love the theories that tie all of these songs and all of these new details of the world back into their older album which I don't think that it's all been going that far back but it is fun to see the ways that all the themes tie through so much of their content revolves around cars like fake you out and taxi cab and then obviously coming up now to next semester where the whole song is about a car driving up it just it makes the song feel that much more real because it's something that has been significant for so long in Fairly local Tyler does this hand movement behind the glass which is the same thing that he does in the second chorus of overcompensate people compared it like frame by frame it's pretty similar and also that video takes place in an icy room which could you know icy tour I'm going to try my very hardest to get as many links and as many sources that I used as possible in the description because I sifted through so much content to try and get as much information as I could and to try and understand this well enough to tell it to you I'll link as much as I can but there are some YouTube channels that really went all in like good day Dema and stolen potential those are two accounts that are still posting regular updates right now with everything that's been going on but they have been doing it for quite a while also the thing I probably referenced more than anything else for this entire video is dmaorg doino Wiki because that lists all of the letters and I will say for sure I went to that more than anything else to try and understand the timeline and to try and understand the story that's being told within the letters it was a lot to look through but that website lays it out really clearly and and then like I kind of talked about earlier there's a theory that I saw good DEA put out a really good video on it about how Tyler isn't Clancy or that he is Clancy now but that doesn't mean he's always been Clancy which is kind of the theory that I'm sticking with right now is that Clancy is just a bigger name that Tyler has taken on think mocking J clany was just a name to use in their Rebellion but that doesn't mean they need the actual Clancy to be using that name they just need somebody who can represent Clancy as this bigger idea of leader of the Rebel because even though Tyler has explicitly stated now that he is Clancy there's lots of information that contradicts that statement like the letters that are very clearly written from Clan's perspective while Tyler would know a lot more about trench and everything else when Clancy is an observer of Tyler and they're both having completely different experiences and feelings about their surroundings and also little details like Tyler saying that Nico was his Bishop while Clancy was saying that Keon is his Bishop those things just don't line up they can't have always been the same person maybe there never was a real single Clancy and it was just a name that was made up so everybody could anonymously share their experiences and their attempts to escape which I do think there was at one point one single Clancy because for a while we were following these letters that detailed the experience of what seemed like one single person which I guess maybe we could have just been following one of many clanes and we were only being delivered those letters but I choose to believe there was at one point a Clancy as an actual individual and that name has now just been taken on maybe because we were able to see the letters so now they're able to use use that name but if Clancy was a real person at what point did we stop seeing the letters from the real one maybe when the message of Clancy is dead maybe that was a true statement the real person that was Clancy is dead and Dimo was using that phrase to try and uninspiring look your leader is dead or the person who's writing this letters that you've been following this person is dead but the Bandidos or the rebels are using the name Clancy and it lives on in that way the name has more power than any one individual so my final thoughts on all of this Tyler talks a lot about how he compartmentalizes and how this music is maybe the one glimpse into that part of himself that he's trying not to focus too much on and I feel like going through all of this helped me to realize just how much I do that myself and it was really comforting to revisit these songs and to get a glimpse into this world that I had only been briefly introduced to when I was first a fan Tyler was able to fully throw himself into the story and I feel like I was really able to do the same and Tyler in interviews had talked about how trench was really hard to write because you're constantly having to bounce between the darkest Parts in your head and then utilizing that to create something and then overcompensating and maybe feeling like you're the greatest because obviously for a while they got really big and it's pretty easy to let that get to your head but then you still want the comfort of the bad feelings it's still familiar it's a place that you want to return to even though maybe you know it's not the best for you and just this constant back and forth between all of these really big feelings I just think it's really interesting but I'm honestly I'm happy that they're going to be wrapping it up and that they're finally going to get a break from this world because it must be really draining to have to go through all of that I mean that's something that they're pretty explicitly saying in some of the songs from this album it's going to be 13 songs as of right now there are three that are already out and the rest come out May 24th now this band meant so much to me so long ago and I love that nearly 10 years later I'm still able to connect with what they're putting out it is so great to feel so understood by so many people and to feel like you're being represented by the band and what they're putting out I feel so lucky that I'm able to be here and that I'm able to be a part of this as it's coming out and that I'm able to understand and that I'm able to connect with other people about all of this it just feels so special I can't think of anything like it if everything goes to plan and I can actually figure out a way to condense all of this video into one final big edit this will hopefully be coming out as a recap of everything maybe a couple days before the album if I'm lucky so that you have time to watch it before the actual album comes out so you have time to actually learn what you're about to be listening to I don't know that's my rough plan at least I really don't think it's going to end up going that way but I'm so excited to see what they're going to come up with and to see what the rest of this album holds but I'm also so scared to see the whole story end Paladin straight is the last song on the album and then it's done but that's that's all I have here we got to wrap this up so if you've made it this far thank you so much for coming on this journey with me please let me know your thoughts on any of it if there's anything that I missed or anything that I maybe misinterpreted please let me know I would love to know what you guys think about all of this with all that being said I think we've done pretty much all that we can do here stay alive stay fighting I'll see you around