2007 Relapse Records
One of those bands I just didn’t get upon first hearing the seminal “Miss Machine” some years back. However, the videos for “Milk Lizard” and “Black Bubblegum” drew me back for another whirl and once their sound sank in, it was positively addictive.
My favorite bands are those who carve their own distinct and unique sound. Even if most extreme music sounds basically the same to you, Dillinger Escape Plan manages to sound like no one else and there’s probably no other band this side of Meshuggah with the ridiculously sick chops to pull this stuff off.
Seriously, even the sheer noise is totally deliberate and calculated…and superb vocalist Greg Puciato knows just when to intersperse melody with the noise. Incredibly, the melodies he comes up with are more memorable and hummable than much of what passes for music on today’s radio. His harsh vocals are abrasive and hair-raising while his melodic vocals are unbelievably strong from hard melody to croon. The fact that a band stuck with the “math metal” tag could pull off a song like “Black Bubblegum” is just amazing to me.
It’s hard to label any one band as the MOST talented band out there, but it’s easy to say there’s probably none more talented than DEP. Leadoff track “Fix Your Face” does exactly that…especially if you really don’t know what you’re getting into, while “Lurch” continues the brilliant cacophony leading strangely yet perfectly into the very melodic “Black Bubblegum” and it’s memorable chorus (I).
Elsewhere “Nong Eye Gong,” the brilliant “Milk Lizard,” “Dead as History” and “Horse Hunter” hit with such conviction and deliberate precision that one can only just shake one’s head in amazement. I imagine it would be like witnessing an asteroid colliding with the earth and managing to survive and be able to stare into the crater.
Rating: 5 out of 5