Twenty One Pilots (album)
debut album by Twenty One Pilots

Twenty One Pilots is the debut studio album by American band Twenty One Pilots, released independently on December 29, 2009. It is the band's only album to feature founding members Nick Thomas and Chris Salih, who both departed the group in 2011.
Background and production
Tyler Joseph met Chris Salih at a party during his time at Ohio State University, who offered to play music with Joseph. They formed the band with Salih playing drums. Later, Nick Thomas was invited by Joseph to join the band as a bassist. In 2009, the group moved into a house of their own and started working on their first album. Joseph was primarily in charge of the songwriting with input provided by other band members. The album was recorded in the basement studio. Due to the low budget for making the album, instead of recording real instrumentals, most of the drum beats were programmed with computer software.
The album cover art was designed by John Rettstatt, a friend of Joseph.
The public source identifies “Twenty One Pilots (album)” as debut album by Twenty One Pilots. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Twenty, Pilots and album.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15958277. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Twenty One Pilots (album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.