The Dillinger Escape Plan Are Mutants: Here’s Proof!

In a week, the UK is going to become a complete mess. Why? Because The Dillinger Escape Plan are about to touch down and get all up in people's faces for no other reason than it's what they do.

Posted Wednesday, 20 October 2010 by Ben Patashnik in

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In a week, the UK is going to become a complete mess. Why? Because The Dillinger Escape Plan are about to touch down and get all up in people's faces for no other reason than it's what they do.

Go on, have some of that.

Now, some of you might be wondering just why we spend so much time talking about a band who don't sell THAT many records, don't play shows THAT big and who aren't THAT good looking - I know, we're wasting valuable Avenged Sevenfold time - but the fact is that they are a band we love more than our own mothers.

To be perfectly honest, they're the sort of band we could spend thousands and thousands of words on. We could pour a nice, stern coffee and talk through their career progression, making complicated analogies about how listening to their music is like being in a plane flying through an electrical storm [Okay, the last time I was on a plane I actually did this, spewing wordy garbage about how watching the wings wobble is like watching vocalist Greg Puciato scream until his eyes look like they're about to burst. To be fair, it was a bit shaky and I was coming back from Norway, hungover as balls] but there's a much more fun way of describing just how good they are.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is drummer Billy Rymer's right calf.

Do you see how insanely overdeveloped that muscle is? What this is telling us is that you essentially have to be a mutant in order to play in The Dillinger Escape Plan, and seeing as mutations are the human race's way of coping with and adapting to nature, it's not all that much of a stretch to say that in five or six centuries, we'll all be able to play drums this well. But for now, they're way ahead of us, and for that we should all be grateful. Why? Because every time I watch TDEP I feel genuinely lucky to watch these five righteous dudes at work, because they put themselves on the line every single night in order to play their music. A lot of bands tour constantly because they love to play music, because they love to trappings of being in a band and love to travel - for TDEP you get the sense the focus is only ever on the music, on the constant evolution of the art they're creating and on the desire to push boundaries with every step.

I mean, sometimes I'm just not in the mood to have my boundaries pushed - there's something to be said for the musical equivalent of comfort food, when you only want to listen to the bands you loved a decade ago because they're warm and familiar. You can't have your face melted every second of every day, otherwise you'd have no face left and powerful music would arguably eventually lose its impact. But TDEP are different, because they make incredibly complex, artistic music sound like pure fuckin' rock 'n' roll. There's no Dream Theater-esque noodling, no posing and no bullshit - the songs are paramount, and the delivery thereof equally important. 'Milk Lizard', the video for which is below, feels like a solid riffy rock song, because that's what it is. If you want to peel back the layers then the song's sheer cleverness gradually reveals itself like a murder mystery, but if you don't then it's just a staggeringly brilliant song to rock out to that could be played in any mainstream rock club on a Saturday night.

It's that lack of pretension that has won them so many die-hard fans - while they could, individually and as a band, go toe-to-toe with any musicians in the world and probably come out on top, none of that really becomes evident when you're listening to the music. There's so much energy and raw adrenaline shooting through every note that the emphasis is always on the rocking out. But if you dig deeper then the rewards are great - there aren't many other bands who put as much care into everything they do (or sell) as Dillinger.

I'd predict that most of the people who love Dillinger wouldn't, if pressed, be able to accurately say why they feel so affectionate towards them. It's not because they're fast, or heavy, or sometimes melodic or sometimes electronic; their appeal lies in the indefinable strangeness of their music. Like trying to explain why 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' by Stevie Wonder is such a perfect pop song, explaining Dillinger is nigh-on impossible. They're constantly changing the way they play - for example, 'Calculating Infinity' still, to this day, shits on most technical metal so why try to better or repeat it? - and the result is that every one of their albums feels like a stone-cold 10/10 the first time you hear it. Of course, it helps that they seem to have unimpeachable quality control [are there any songs on TDEP albums that you actively dislike?] but it all comes down to that slavish devotion to creating a new kind of song.

Or, you could look at Billy's leg again. Check that shit out.