Irony Is a Dead Scene

by

The Dillinger Escape Plan

Edit

Imagine Mike Patton in all his celestial glory fronting one of the most finely tuned precision thrassh out chaos-core (huh? whatever? I won't pretend to know the nominative of the sub-genre DEP are subsumed into: I could give two frux and a plastic spoon. They thrash) bands out there... Getting warmer?

I don't know where to begin. This is one of the most jaw droppingly abrasive, soul-shattering gorgeous, brooding, lung-slittingly ominous, skullbanging, moribundfreaking, pulse-accelerating, beyond hardcore, mind-incinerating, neck twitching, foot-tapping, eyebrow raising, involuntary air guitar improvising, leaving the souls of all who listen twisting in its wake sprinting, eye gouging, vein bursting, dynamic shredding, leaving on for hours at a time demanding, relentlessly deafening... INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!! THE BEST YOU WILL EVER HAVE!!!!! as Patton himself succinctly puts it.

From start to finish this thing just blows up in your face. Explodes on impact like an RPG-7 (and costs about as much too!) on an APC, turing the listener's brains into beef tartar. The final track is perhaps the most consistently twisted thing I have heard this month. Track 4: A straight-forward cover of Aphex Twin's 'Come to Daddy,' utterly thrashed out. Track 3 is my fave. It's the longest and most dynamic with a beautiful slow/melodic part towards the end. Track 1 is just nuts. Track 2 is more atmospheric, at least in the beginning, pre-the-massive-sanguine-crunch-fest.

Just get it. If you've come this far you've done so for a reason. If you're a fan of either of these: be it Patton (this is so much better than most of Tomahawk, i hate to say it but this is what i expected Tomahawk to sound like and was never quite as happy with the results...) or DEP (Dmitri's vox were the ONE thing that put me off about this group, patton, well- he's mike patton. Who the hell are you and what have you done?

You know you really want this.

Before going any further, I should note that I'm really probably not the best person to review this, Dillinger Escape Plan's sound is way outside of my normal listening realm, but I'm a fan of Mike Patton's work, so I thought I'd check this one out. Having said that, a bit about this.

The music is relentlessly performed, clearly these guys have a good grasp over what they're doing, and they do manage to resist the urge to produce an entire record of fast-and-heavy. For Patton's part, he pulls out the usual bag of metal tricks, the screams, wails, weird vocal noises, half spoken vocals, growls, chants, etc.

One criticism I will clearly state is that the production value isn't supportive of the music-- the record is muddy, this turns something with a lot of precision playing like opener "Hollywood Squares" or "When Good Dogs Do Bad Things" into a sludgy speed mess. There's also teh oddball choice of cutting "Pig Latin" off abruptly, just as the song starts establishing a mood (its in my assessment the standout cut on the record). Also quite listenable is the cover, "Come to Daddy", largely thrashy guitar and Patton vocalizations, but it works out pretty well.

That's my take, again I may not be the best reviewer, but I suspect that at least for Patton fans, this is largely unessential.