page_title: Trench (album)
section_title: Background and production
hierarchical_section_title: Trench (album) / Background and production
caption_attribution_description: English: Mutemath performing on January 27, 2012 in Austin, Texas.
context_page_description: Trench is the fifth studio album by American musical duo Twenty One Pilots, released on October 5, 2018 through Fueled by Ramen. It is the band's first studio album in three years, after the breakthrough success of their previous album, Blurryface. Recorded in secret during a year-long public silence, it is a concept album which explores mental health, suicide, and doubt, themes prominently featured in the band's previous works, framed in the metaphorical city of Dema and the surrounding valley known as "Trench". The album was also the first release of the newly-revived Elektra Music Group.
  The album was preceded by the release of four singles. The first two, "Jumpsuit" and "Nico and the Niners", were both released on July 11, 2018. The third single, "Levitate", was released on August 8, 2018. The fourth single, "My Blood", was released August 27, 2018. Two more singles, "Chlorine" and "The Hype", were released on January 22 and July 16, 2019 respectively. To promote the album, the band embarked on The Bandito Tour, which began at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee on October 16, 2018.
context_section_description: Twenty One Pilots released their fourth studio album, Blurryface, on May 17, 2015.  The album topped the Billboard 200 and produced two top five singles, "Stressed Out" and "Ride", peaking at number two and number five, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.  The songs, along with the single "Heathens" from the Suicide Squad soundtrack, launched the band into mainstream success in 2016. The duo embarked on two world tours in support of the album from 2015 to 2017. In an interview with Alternative Press, the band stated that they would be "going dark" in order to focus on new music, and added that they would focus on the lyrical content and bring back the "authenticity, lyrics, delivery, and fearlessness of songwriting" of the band's eponymous album. Following the five final dates of the band's tour, "Tour De Columbus", the duo entered a year-long break from public appearances beginning on July 6, 2017, in order to rest and work on their next project.
  The conceptual world of "Trench" was created before the songs from the album had been written, departing from the band's regular songwriting process where they would create the album song by song. It is unclear when production of Trench began; however, lead singer Tyler Joseph was working on the track "Bandito" as early as 2015, during the Blurryface Tour. Joseph produced the album's fourteen tracks within his private home studio, while Josh Dun's drum tracks were recorded at United Recording Studios. Mutemath frontman and keyboardist Paul Meany co-produced and co-wrote much of the project, following his previous collaboration with Twenty One Pilots for the TOPxMM remix EP and on the Emotional Roadshow World Tour. Adam Hawkins mixed the album in its entirety. The album's "drop dead due date to get ahead of production and distribution" was August 15, 2018, less than two months before the release of the album.
  No one other than Joseph, Dun, and Meany were involved in the songwriting process for the album in order to eliminate any effect a family member, friend or colleague could have on the final form of the record's content through their comments. In an interview with Kerrang!, Joseph explained that he only showed these people the album when it was finished so that their reaction would be "as close to their true reaction as possible." In a later interview with The New York Times, he recounted how the project "almost destroyed" him, leading him to consider ending all work on it, as his emotional state "whiplashed" between self-deprecation and self-confidence.
caption: Paul Meany, singer and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Mutemath, co-wrote and co-produced much of the project alongside frontman Tyler Joseph.
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