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Interviews: The Dillinger Escape Plan

Rock Sound talks credit card debt with The Dillinger Escape Plan.

The often injured Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weinman puts his money where his mouth is. ''I am twelve grand in the hole right now,'' he admits. ''I just spent the money to keep things going. We have needed to buy flights for our drummer so he can practise, so that goes straight on my credit card. That has been a constant thing for us and it is something bands do not understand that are on bigger labels with tons of resources and stuff.''

Despite these problems and his penchant for saying controversial things in the press he is not bitter, in fact he is almost hopeful. ''I definitely would like things to get to the next level and I would love to make good money doing this,'' he admits before adding this proviso. ''But we hope that one day people will bend to us. It is a different time in music and I would love to work out how to best optimise our art financially and business wise so that we can continue to do without compromising in a business that is in a fucking mess right now.''

It is important to the band that the world bend to them, but they themselves are not entirely unflexible as the guitarist reveals that some of the band's new album 'Ire Works' came from an unlikely place. ''A lot of the songs I wrote when I was not even thinking about Dillinger,'' comments Weinman. ''I was out of order and not even using a guitar so part of the new record was written electronically first without thought of it being Dillinger, those were really fun for me then incorporating the guys into that was fun too.''

Fun? Dillinger Escape Plan? Sure, as long as it is different the band are down with it. ''We are just doing something different,'' continues the guitarist. ''We do not consider ourselves peers with Avenged Sevenfold or Coheed And Cambria or even bands that we are friends with like Converge and Mastodon from a similar background. We are out to do something different and thus we do not compare ourselves at all. Our goal is to please ourselves, to do what we do but better each time. To explore new things and I think we did that with our new record. It is an amalgamation of the things we did well on our last records but it is like we just figured it out.''