Has Twenty One Pilots fallen into the pit of over-production?

Just in the past two years Twenty One Pilots has risen from being rather unknown to one of the superstars in alternative rock/pop. All of this fame came mostly from their third full-length album called Vessel. This was their first album signed with Fueled by Ramen. Their fourth full-length album, Blurryface, is set to come out on May 19th, 2015 through their record label, Fueled by Ramen. Twenty One Pilots consists of two members, Tyler Joseph (vocals, piano, keyboards, ukulele, and synthesizer) and Josh Dun (drums). These two have risen to fame because of their unique take on alternative and pop. Their music features a lot of unique and infectious electronic beats with a decent amount of piano sprinkled in alongside the drum beats. Their clever hooks and lyrics keep the music interesting and fresh. After saying all that you probably think I’m going to go into detail about how Blurryface is an amazing record. Quite the opposite actually.

Blurryface has its great parts but for the most part it is rather disappointing to the seasoned Twenty One Pilots listener. The first half of the album is clearly more interesting and creative than the second half. The second half is the most uninspired work they have released thus far, minus one song, Message Man. There’s too much going on in the songs and the reason why I say that is not because theres so many different styles or elements in each song. I say it because the way the songs are arranged it almost seems like they threw in sounds just because they liked how it sounded by itself.

Their new album feels like a watered-down version of Vessel that was designed to be more radio-friendly and more accessible to a larger audience. Songs like Doubt and Polarize are probably the least creative songs Twenty One Pilots has ever written. Doubt features an auto tuned Tyler Joseph singing an over-produced chorus and Polarize sounds like a cookie-cutter pop song that gets overplayed on the radio. Throughout the album I kept thinking “hmmm I’ve heard something like that before” which isn’t what I was expecting from a Twenty One Pilots release since on their other albums I never had that thought. A lot of the songs feel like they took a certain style from another artist and tweaked it a little to make it their own instead of sticking to creating their own style like they did on Vessel or Regional at Best. Twenty One Pilots works best without all the flare that they carelessly added into this album.

Seeing as this is their first record where they actually had a lot of fame and support coming into it, I can’t say they are doomed to forever go down the road of over-production and failed creativity. This album just didn’t do it for me, each time I listen to it I get a little more disappointed which is not what you want in an album. The album had some stand out parts that make certain songs good and enjoyable to listen to but not nearly as memorable as Vessel or Regional at Best, two albums that still don’t bore me after hundreds of listens. Everything just felt like they were trying too hard, like they kept tweaking the songs to make them perfect but after all that tweaking it ended up being too much. I just hope Twenty One Pilots can go back to creating music that is unique to them instead of pulling styles from other sources.

6/10

Unknown

Author & Editor

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