With great anticipation comes with great responsibility (or whatever that quote is). After how many years of waiting, the Dema volume is about to reach its final act with Twenty One Pilots’ comeback single, Overcompensate, already hinted to the fans at the end of the trailer they have recently released.
Right off the bat, the band’s known murky yet pristine sonic production choices are audibly presented, something that has been retreated due to the duo’s swiveling towards a more brightly manufactured record Scaled and Icy. The isolating piano transitioning to the repetitive synth patterns in the beginning reverberated a visualization of where we are as of the moment—in a body of water reaching to the land, thus:
Welcome back to Trench.
As speculated to be the starting track of the upcoming record, Clancy sets the stage as he arrives back to this fictional place the band has created since the lore began. There is highly to note, however, that there were mixed monologues spoken in three different languages—German, French, and Spanish. They all share the same English translation as follows:
This small eerie island has made me a weapon. We both believe that we can use it to change the momentum of this war. The lead single Overcompensate compensates towards their previous records in order to give us a glimpse that the story has been in order. In Trench’s Levitate, Tyler Joseph, the duo-band’s vocalist, sing-raps:
Wait, habits here too, you’re the worst, your structure compensates
But compensation feels a lot like rising up to dominate by track two
The song introduces a rebirthed Clancy, being awakened by his own eyes about Dema and their corresponding rulers’ wicked governance, trying to go all the way and destroy using his own grasp despite his massive difference with regards to the nation’s power and glory. Accompanied by Josh Dun, the drummer, who has seen to be the Torchbearer of the Banditos since the era of Trench began, symbolizes the usual life lesson that a man is never an island, at least for a long period of time, and companionship plays such a huge role in every journey, knowing that there is someone who will be in your back whenever things, both good and bad, happen. In the storyline, they both instill the vision of conquering Bishops’ reign and face danger together as they walk through it.
The bridge somehow disrupted the structure in such a way that could possibly ruin the song’s entirety but the band had managed to pull it through—an abrasively subtle sing-rap verse about him showing what is going through his brain by that moment, reflecting how it takes a number of years for one to get that time is not that long as it seems to be, as specified in this line:
Do the years seem way too short for my soul, corazón?
One thing to note is how the music video for this song features Tyler pointing both his head and heart. If speculations are yet to be arisen, part of the narrative could also be a battle between the brain and the heart upon going back to the place once introduced as sheer pain, which will be more known once the album is out.
Speaking of the album, the band has already publicized the almost orange-themed, blasting flamed cover, something to consider as well wherein aside from their roughly edged cut-outs painted in monochromes, orange, taken from the perspective of the color wheel theory, is a secondary color from both red (highly evident in Blurryface) and yellow (highly evident in Trench).
Overall, minus the Scaled and Icy’s lighter soundscapes, the band’s well-known records—2014’s overarching insecurities shown in Blurryface and 2018’s never-ending and never-mending thoroughfare in Trench, are both meshed together, complementing each other’s striking strengths based from what we have heard from those records both sonically and lyrically, in order to understand that the final chapter will be Clancy’s answer to all that has gone through since his raging mental wars, only if he goes along with these tidal waves occurrence as he stepped off again to the continent of Trench.
And so the journey begins.
Overcompensate will be part of the band’s upcoming released titled, “Clancy,” and is set to narrate everything through his point of view this coming May 17th.
Aside from the single, the band also released an edited version of the same track, omitting the different languages and the intro verse as presented in the music video.
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About the Author
Jett interestingly seeks every supposed-to-be-life-changing almost: getting a Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education, submitting a finished compilation of epistles and poems to some book publications, and releasing passion projects to audio streaming platforms. However, his inkling of his pen and his reverberating of his music, being the ones that keep him sustained in somehows, never stop him from walking to a road yet to be taken.
