Fueled by the need to create something that was the antithesis of the current situation, Grammy-award winning duo Twenty One Pilots recently released their new album, Scaled And Icy.
According to frontman Tyler Joseph, the record represented creativity and imagination in order to compensate for being unable to tour while on lockdown.
“We made sure that even if we felt confined by one space, we wanted to make sure that we did not feel confined musically. So we might have overcompensated cause we wanted to push those walls out. So we wrote something more colorful and imaginative,” Joseph told SoundStrip and other media during a recent virtual press conference.
For them, it did not feel ‘right’ to write an album that reflected the darker aspects of the year, so they leaned into a more ‘imaginative and hopeful’ angle as a way of combating these rough times and getting through them. In fact, Tyler mentioned that Scaled and Icy was actually short for ‘Scaled back and Isolated’. Add to that the duo’s love for fantastical stories, the concept of the album comes together in the form of a dragon, who is featured on the cover art.
“When I thought of those words, I tried to put a spin on them that was something the opposite of. So when I thought of Scaled and Icy, I immediately thought of this dragon. He really brings home the reason why we named the record Scaled and Icy and when you listen to the four records you could see that,”
The aforementioned dragon, lovingly referred to as Trash the dragon, was a source of “inspiration, fear and magic” for the duo, representing the freedom and limitless creative power they wanted the album to embody.
Following the success of albums Blurry Face and Trench, the band stated that though they feel pressure to live up to their success, they focus on making sure they like each song they put out and focus on growing their musicality and their narrative.
“It’s interesting for us to try and grow musically and to try to outdo ourselves,” said drummer Josh Dun.
“I think I wrote Trench in reaction to Blurry Face. Josh and I needed to prove something, I guess to reexplain who we were because the story of Blurry Face became a lot different than what we envisioned. So Trench was kind of a course correction, a compensation for how large Blurry Face got. Now looking back on it, Scaled and Icy is a reaction to Trench, almost like we keep going back and forth. So I think each record builds on each other,” said Tyler.
In addition to growing musically, the duo also incorporated new elements and meaning into the making of the album. For Tyler, this was done by incorporating his daughter’s coos in the background of the lead single, “Shy Away.”
“The way I view music changed in a sense that I like to look for opportunities to add meaning to the songs. So the simple fact that she makes a noise in the background and it’s a part of the song, in that sense it made the song much more important to me,” he said.
Scaled and Icy, the new album by Twenty One Pilots is released by Warner Music Philippines and is now available in major streaming platforms.