From ‘Vessel’ to ‘Breach’: The Ten-Year Journey That Led Twenty One Pilots to Their First #1 Alternative Album

With “City Walls” and their new album ‘Breach,’ Twenty One Pilots close out a decade of narrative world-building while earning their first #1 on the Alternative Airplay chart.

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Stream: “City Walls” – Twenty One Pilots

Over the past decade, no mainstream rock band has committed to narrative world-building quite as intensely as Twenty One Pilots.

To call their Dema storyline ambitious would be to undersell it drastically: It has unfolded across multiple albums, music videos, hidden websites, puzzles, Easter eggs, tour visuals, and a mythology that fans have eagerly deciphered in real time. Since 2015’s Blurryface, the pair have woven a multi-album story that fans have followed with the dedication usually reserved for prestige television. With the release of their eighth studio album, Breach, which has surged to #1 on the Alternative Airplay charts, the band has delivered not just a new collection of songs but the long-awaited conclusion to a story that has defined an era of their career.

Breach - Twenty One Pilots — Breach – Twenty One Pilots

If Twenty One Pilots’ universe has always felt like a place defined by pressure, Breach’s opening track “City Walls” sounds like the moment that pressure finally cracks open. Gritty, immediate, and seething with the rawness of confrontation, the track finds Joseph and Dun leaning into the most bruised corners of their sound. They have always thrived at the intersection of spectacle and sincerity, and this particular song proves just how confidently they can transform personal anxieties into widescreen mythology.

The track erupts with a massive bass line and a chorus built to fill arenas, but what makes it compelling is the emotional core Tyler Joseph refuses to abandon. Even as the song tips into high-drama sonic intensity, overdriven drums, layered screams, and dark synths, the lyrics feel intimate, almost like late-night confessions shouted through a megaphone.

Fans who have followed the Dema story will recognize lyrical breadcrumbs instantly. “Entertain my faith,” originally delivered in 2013’s “Holding on to You,” returns here like a phrase engraved in the architecture of the band’s universe, a motto revisited and reshaped through years of artistic evolution. Even more striking is the brief reappearance of the “Heavydirtysoul” instrumental, which arrives like a ghost at the end of the track. A decade after that song launched the conceptual arc, its DNA resurfaces as if the musical world itself is folding back in on its origin point.

The accompanying music video, directed by Jensen Noen, is as expansive and cinematic as the song demands.

Nearly ten minutes in length and reportedly costing a million dollars to create, the film picks up directly where the Clancy era visuals left off. The setting: The shadowed towers and harsh concrete monoliths of Dema. The stakes: The final confrontation between Joseph’s character Clancy and Nico, the leader of the oppressive bishops. Throughout the battle, Clancy is haunted by visions of his younger self, flashes from earlier music videos, and reminders of battles fought, lost, and endured. The burden of history, the idea of the self defined by what one has survived, becomes the emotional center of both the track and the visual narrative. By the time the climactic moment arrives, Clancy, transformed, veiled in a bishop’s robe, transformed into the very system he fought against, the video reveals its harsh but resonant message: Some victories cost more than anyone expects.

It’s the kind of cinematic ambition rarely seen in rock visuals in the streaming age, a production worth comparing to the short films of artists like Beyoncé or Michael Jackson in their grandest eras. In a collision of allegory, identity crisis, and blockbuster filmmaking, Clancy battles Nico at the top of Dema’s tower while flashes from the band’s past, “Jumpsuit,” “Levitate,” and “Heavydirtysoul” remind viewers how far this universe has evolved.

Instead of ending on a triumphant note, the story finds poignancy in imperfection. Josh Dun’s Torchbearer character refuses to accept the transformation, departing with the promise that they will try again. It is not a conclusion of total resolution but one of continuity. The story ends with a cliffhanger disguised as a farewell, reminding viewers that personal transformation is messy, nonlinear, and never fully finished. In this way, Breach aligns with how Twenty One Pilots have always written: Hope and despair exist in the same breath, and meaning comes not from the absence of struggle but from moving forward despite it.

Breach is a synthesis of everything the band has experimented with over the years. The percussive aggression that defined Blurryface, the atmospheric world-building of Trench, and the emotional immediacy of Vessel all coexist within the album’s textures. If “City Walls” is its emotional thesis statement, other tracks like “Drum Show” and “The Contract” extend the palette, songs that have not only charted strongly but helped propel the album to the top of Alternative Airplay, the first time the band has claimed that peak with an album release.

Twenty One Pilots Breach a Bold New Era with Explosive Single “The Contract”

:: TODAY'S SONG ::

What’s most striking about Twenty One Pilots in 2025 is that their success flies in the face of prevailing industry logic.

In a time built on viral singles and short-form fandoms, the band has insisted on something sprawling, intricate, and slow-burning. They have created a world that rewards investment, curiosity, and interpretation. Their audience is not just listening; they’re decoding, discussing, reenvisioning. They’ve made music an invitation to join a story rather than merely consume one.

With “City Walls,” that story arrives at a milestone: Not an ending, but a moment of transformation, a final page that promises more unwritten chapters beyond it. Breach lands as both a celebration of what Twenty One Pilots have spent a decade building and a testament to the power of narrative in a genre that often pretends it has outgrown myth. Their world remains intact, complex, and deeply felt, and that mythos has taken them somewhere few rock acts still dare to go: To #1, not through simplification, but through ambition.

In a finale worthy of its mythology, Twenty One Pilots conclude the saga of Dema with a chart-topping album and their most ambitious visual chapter yet.

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