Breach: Digital Remains

Since blowing up in 2015 with their fourth album, <i>Blurryface</i>, the duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have parlayed their high-concept rap-rock-pop hybrid into massive mainstream success. All the while, they’ve built an ornate fictional universe in which the exploits of characters like Clancy and the Torchbearer function as allegories about living with depression, anxiety and insecurity. <i>Breach</i>, the duo’s eighth album, concludes the decade-long narrative that began with <i>Blurryface</i> and continued with their next three full-lengths (2018’s <i>Trench</i>, 2021’s <i>Scaled and Icy</i> and 2024’s <i>Clancy</i>), resolving the cliffhanger of its predecessor’s ending. Through a dense rap-rock dystopia populated by robots and necromancers, the duo fight through bouts of insecurity (“Garbage”) and paranoia (“The Contract”, which recruits YUNGBLUD to continue where last year’s “Paladin Strait” left off). “Did you learn a thing?” Joseph sings on the haunting closing track, looking back on the decade-long journey and concluding: “Intentions will set you free.”