Banditos

Lore & Background

In the music videos the Banditos appear as rebels laden with yellow. People in yellow-taped outfits watch from the clifftops in "Jumpsuit", Clancy and the Torchbearer join them in "Nico and the Niners", and "Levitate" shows a torch-lit mountain retreat filled with them. In "Paladin Strait" an army of Banditos led by Clancy battles the Glorious Gones, and in "City Walls" the Torchbearer and a group of Banditos rush up the tower to help Clancy.

The Liberation Narrative

The Banditos exist as the resistance force within the Trench universe, a conceptual world built around the fictional city of Dema. Their stated purpose is to free the people trapped under the rule of nine bishops who govern the city. This narrative framework was not an afterthought; Tyler Joseph constructed the entire Trench world before any of the album's songs were written, a departure from the duo's usual process of building records track by track.

The Banditos' mission to liberate Dema mirrors the album's broader exploration of mental health, suicide, and doubt—themes that had been central to Twenty One Pilots' previous work. The concept was developed during a year of complete public silence, beginning in July 2017, after the band finished their Tour De Columbus dates. Joseph had been working on the track "Bandito" as early as 2015, during the Blurryface Tour, suggesting the liberation narrative had been gestating long before the album took its final shape.

The Invisible Color

The Banditos' most distinctive symbolic marker is the color yellow, specifically the hex code 0xFCE300. Within the Trench narrative, this particular shade is invisible to the nine bishops who rule Dema—they perceive it only as grey. This creates a powerful metaphor: the resistance operates in a spectrum that their oppressors literally cannot register. The bishops, including the chief bishop Nico (whose full name is Nicolas Bourbaki, a reference to a collective pseudonym used by a group of mainly French mathematicians), represent the forces that keep the people of Dema in bondage.

Joseph revealed that Nico is actually Blurryface, the personification of his own insecurities from the 2015 album of the same name. The Banditos, then, become the counterforce to internalized doubt and fear, wielding a color that the very architects of their oppression are blind to. This visual and narrative detail was woven throughout the album's marketing materials and accompanying music videos.

Forged in Secrecy

The Trench project, and with it the Banditos narrative, was crafted under conditions of extreme isolation. Following the mainstream explosion of Blurryface in 2016, the duo announced they would be "going dark" to focus on new music, specifically aiming to recover the authenticity and fearlessness of their self-titled debut. After their final Tour De Columbus dates on July 6, 2017, they entered a full year without public appearances. Joseph produced all fourteen tracks in his private home studio, while Dun recorded drums at United Recording Studios.

Crucially, no one outside the trio of Joseph, Dun, and co-producer Paul Meany was permitted to hear or comment on the material during its creation. Joseph explained in a Kerrang! interview that he withheld the finished record from even close personal contacts so their reactions would be as genuine as possible. He later told The New York Times the process nearly broke him, with his emotional state swinging violently between self-deprecation and self-confidence.

The Dying Religion Metaphor

The city of Dema draws its name from the Zoroastrian concept of dakhma, or "Tower of Silence," structures where the dead were left for vultures to consume. The band explained to Reddit that what drew them to this imagery was the melancholy idea of a faith in decline, where the cause of its fading was entirely beyond its own control—the simple absence of the vultures required to fulfill its theological purpose. They noted that something as basic and practical as the lack of a necessary natural element can render an entire belief system powerless. This metaphor of a framework rendered impotent by circumstances outside its influence resonates deeply with the album's preoccupation with mental health and the sensation of being trapped. The album, released October 5, 2018, through Fueled by Ramen and Elektra Records, marked the first release from the newly revived Elektra Music Group.