Music Reviews

So here it is, after a tremendous ammount of waiting we finally arrive at the new Twenty One Pilots a highly anticipated follow-up to their critically aclaimed magnum opus „Trench“ – on Trench the group proved that they were more then your average pop music duo, experimenting with variety of sounds and styles, with very statisfying results, yet they still managed to keep their signature sound through all of it. Now here we are, Scaled and Icy, it’s fresh, exciting and most important of all, super disapointing – here is why.

So breaking this track by track we have quite a lot to unpack here and let me tell you, this thing is like the definition of a mixbag – the record starts with the low-key charming Beatles inspired ballad „Good Day“ which is an okay mood-setter. Off the back it’s very piano-driven, very tame with some occasionally cheezy but otherwise introspective lyrics talking about a hypothethical scenario, where Tyler looses everything in his life, from his wife and children to his music career, just all gone – the cheery sound compliments the depressing lyric quite well actually. The follow-up „Choker“ aslo the second single released prior to this thing is the first red flag that got me a bit worried going into this album – the souund clearly takes inspiration from their Vessel roots, the synths are kind of cute and the weirly mixed drums actually grew on me a bit, but I just can’t get past the chorus on this thing and ESPECIALLY the final rap verse at the last leg, that really makes me physically cringe, it really gets on my nerves. Now the first single „Shy Away“ is actually one of the best if not THE best song on the album – the clever synth-driven beat with the sharp drumming and the kind of 80’s inspired sound really works in the song’s favour. Now so far the album is okay, but just suffers from one critical flaw, which is how poppy it sounds – this album just takes NO risks whatsoever and rather then an evolution from Trench it feels like some cheap radio-friendly knockoff of that album. This also carries to the next song „The Outside“, which I found insultingly boring at first, but if I’m being completely honest, it grew on me a little – the rapping here is also substantionally better compared to like let’s say Choker – it’s justt kind of a funky vibe. Which is also something that can be said about the next song „Saturday“, the instrumentation is really what saves this one, beacuse the chorus is legitemately horrible. I also really like the pre-chorus on this one, it sounds really nice to the ears. It’s not bad, but neither is ait all that good, it’s just kind of there, whatever. „Never Take It“ is like Choker part two, with the weird mixing and more sellout sounds, like the handclaps. There are SOME cool ides but just burried under this awful mix and commercial sound that just starts to get a bit tiring by this point in the album. „Malberry street“ is one of those songs that you just completely forget every note from once the song ends, I can’t recall anything from this, all I know is that it sounds exactly like it’s title – make of that whatever you want. „Formidable“ more like FORGETABLE amirite? No but to be honest, this song is one of the more better sounding of this whole thing, it’s just kind of a charming guitar ballad with a nice laid-back summer vibe and some actually pretty cool guitar passages, but as everything so far in the second half of this album, it just gets stale after a while. „Bounce Man“ is literally so horrible I can’t even begin to tell you why – first of all the awful ukulele intro gives me severe PTSD and it somehow actually gets worse from there – the song is just a fricking mess, that’s what it is. This is three minuts of my time I’m never getting back, oh my lord… Anyways the band kinda saved the best for last with the both barely tolerable „No Chances“ and „Redecorate“ which the former of the two makes me so damn mad, because there is just so much potential to this song and yet it wastes almost every single bit of it – it’s just all over the place, when it should have been the biggest banger in the world. The closer is the more statisfying of the two with some legitemately beautiful guitar plucks that almost make up for some of the weirdly mixed backing vocals – I gotta say though, this song really is a grower and quite a nice finnish to this album.

This thing really is a front-loaded snooze fest with some cool ideas saved for last, but that doesn’t excuse the painfully average part in the middle. Also the mixing throughout the whole album is just so… Cheap and skeletal, I just don’t get it, what happened Tyler? It’s still istenable though, I’m not mad at this, just very disapointed.

Light 5/10