Twenty One Pilots Discuss Insecurities & Not Wanting to Feel Comfortable

Twenty One Pilots is gracing the cover of Kerrang! this month to celebrate the release of their highly anticipated fifth album, Trench.

During their extensive interview, singer Tyler Joseph gets candid about the importance of chaos and struggle to the band's writing process.

“There’s certain things that you work through, as a human,” Joseph explained. “Obviously, there’s things where it’s like, ‘Are we good enough to play music for a living? Are we good enough to write songs and show people what we’re made of?’ As things got bigger, there was some confidence instilled in us – like, ‘You know what? Actually we can do this…’" 

"But there are also a lot of aspects of doubt and insecurity that the level of success doesn’t even affect," he continued. "And, partially, I’m glad, because I don’t necessarily want that external reward to solve some sort of internal issue. I think that Josh [Dun] and I will take every stage with a bit of needing to overcome something, and wanting to work through something. We never want to feel completely comfortable; we want people to see us working through something, and for us to struggle, and see a bit of turmoil and chaos.”

While the duo was on its massive tour to support Blurryface, Joseph admits things started to get a little too predictable for their liking.

“I would say that there was an aspect towards the end of the touring cycle for Blurryface where we started to feel like we knew what to expect at each show," he said. "And we didn’t like that. We don’t want to take the stage going, ‘I know exactly what’s going to happen tonight.’ As that started to sink in, it really started to make sense that we should wrap it up, and dive into creating this new music.”

Trench comes out October 5 on Fueled by Ramen, then TOP hits the road for an extensive world tour.

Photo: Getty Images