Tony Cummings gives some background to the 'Clancy' album by TWENTY ONE PILOTS

Twenty One Pilots (photo: Ashley Osborne)

The first single from Twenty One Pilots' seventh album 'Clancy', "Overcompensate" is a recent Cross Rhythms chart-topper and demonstrates again the Christian friends Josh Dun and Tyler Joseph are still able to make music which connects with a huge international audience. The 'Clancy' album concludes an intricate fictional story told across multiple formats beginning with 2015's 'Blurryface' set and continuing through the duo's subsequent 'Trench' (2018) and 'Scaled And Icy' (2021). Everything from sleeve art details and a short video "I Am Clancy" have been posted on social media. The video attempts to recap the Clancy storyline including Clancy's attempts to escape Dema, joining the Banditos, being captured by the bishops of Dema and escaping to Voldsoy before obtaining a special power to take control of recently deceased people. The video ended with Clancy announcing that he would be "returning to Trench."

At an album launch for 'Clancy' in New York, Twenty One Pilots' Tyler Joseph said, "The story, I guess it was a bit of a hybrid in the overall arc of it was written out from the beginning, but there were a lot of twists and turns inside of the journey that we made. I guess in a way, we were really inspired by our own fans. As the story was being told, there were certain details that came out of the story because of watching how people reacted to it and what they were drawn to. We knew what we were gonna say and what we wanted to accomplish with the story. Basically, the album 'Blurryface' is a reference to a character in the story that we've been telling, who's kind of the antagonist. We find out his real name is Nico and he's constantly - basically, the lead character of 'Clancy' is constantly hunted down by this character. A lot of details go into where they're from and how they got there, and I'm really excited to tell how it all ends - and that's what this album is gonna do."