ISSUE SIX POINT 5 – SPECIAL EDITION #1
THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN
THE GAELIC CLUB 2004
ALL PHOTOS THIS PAGE BY NIC BEZZINA
UNSW ROUNDHOUSE 2008
THE FORUM 2009
THE METRO 2010
Editor-In-Chief: Sarah Petchell Photo Editor: Craig Nye Words: Sarah Petchell Photos: Craig Nye, Nic Bezzina, Ben Clement Logo by Joel Birch of Umbrella Creative Studios Cover Photo: Craig Nye This page... Photo by Ben Clement
The views and opinions express in No Heroes are not particularly those held by the publishers. All content is Copyright to No Heroes 2010 For information including contributing, advertising and general comments email: info@noheroesmag.com www.noheroesmag.com
Editor’s Letter ... p.5 Interview with Ben Weinman ... p.6 Photos ... p.12 Interview with Greg Puciato ... p.16 Essential Listening ... p.24
I can clearly remember the first time I ever heard a Dillinger Escape Plan song. It was ‘Baby’s First Coffin’ from the Underworld soundtrack and I HATED it! I Greg Puciato would be particularly pleased to hear that I had that strong a reaction to the song on the very first listen. I’m still startled by how much I couldn’t comprehend was I was hearing! What’s even more shocking is that now, almost eight years later, the Dillinger Escape Plan are probably tied for equal first as my favourite band ever (with Radiohead of all bands...). So when the opportunity came to interview members of the band following the release of their latest math-metal masterpiece Option Paralysis, I knew I had to do something special. This Special Edition of No Heroes is the closest that this magazine will ever come to a fanzine, and I feel justified doing this for a number of reasons. Obviously the first is that they’re my favourite band. Secondly, without this band Craig Nye (this magazine’s Photo Editor) and I would probably not be friends! It was a mutual appreciation and lots of long discussions via text message and MySpace comments about topics ranging from Greg Puciato versus Justin Tim-
berlake to Greg’s penchant for tuna (‘It’s not a tuna!’) and Ben’s nerdish ways that sowed the seeds of that particular friendship. Thirdly, I have seen the band five times now and never once have they let me down. I’ve never seen another band perform with the same dynamic passion nor the same frantic, frenetic energy. Basically, I love this band. And anyone that knows me, knows just how true this is. So this is the result: I did two very extensive interviews (one with guitarist, Ben Weinman, and the other with vocalist, Greg Puciato) which are here in all their full 3000+ word glory. That’s 3000+ words each. Basically, they were asked the same questions but it’s really interesting to see where the answers are the same and where they differ. Then Nic Bezzina (who is also a massive fan) contributed photos to us from the four times he has shot them, as you can see from the previous page. We also have photos from Ben Clement who shot their show at the Hi Fi in Melbourne back in May. All in all, I’m so excited about this issue, and I hope you’re all as psyched on it as I am once you’ve read it through! Cheers, Sarah x
EDITOR’S LETTER
BEN WEINMAN What are you up to today? “Playing a show, as usual.”
How are the shows going so far? “They’re going great! We’re seven weeks into our Option Paralysis tour and the record came out about a week ago so it’s all pretty exciting.” What’s the response been like to the new record and to the tracks being played live? “It’s been amazing and, surprisingly, even before the record came out it was really good. The new songs literally feel like we’re playing old songs, right off the bat, so it just tells me that there’s something really special about the energy of this record.” What exactly does Option Paralysis mean? “Well, literally it means just having so many choices and options that you freeze and you don’t pick anything. But to me, it kind of symbolically represents the state we’re in just in general, specifically in relation to culture and art. “We have so much easy access to information and music and everything else right now that people don’t really know what’s important anymore because they don’t have to work hard for anything. “That’s becoming kind of a problem and those are the sorts of things that plague us as musicians more than downloading and stuff like that.”
In what ways do they plague you? “Being a band that’s been around for as long as we have, we started before there was really MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and all of that. So we didn’t really have access to all these promotional tools. “Eventually these became amazing for bands like us to get our music out to people all around the world. But as we’ve watched the scene grow with these technologies, we’ve had a lot of fans have a lot of access to almost like our blueprint of how to do things, as opposed to being a band because they love it and do it from the heart without the intention of becoming a giant star. “When we started playing this kind of music, there was no possibility of being in big magazines, being on TV, coming to Australia or anything like that. Those things were just so far beyond our reach and possibilities that we didn’t have that in mind when we were writing our music. It just becomes hard for artists to not consider these things when they surround you all the time.” Do you think it’s also kind of created a sort of cookie-cutter approach to creating a band? “I definitely think that’s the case! I don’t think that it’s anyone’s fault exactly, I just think it’s unavoidable. I can’t help but to, after we play every night, go to check YouTube and see what videos have been uploaded.
“Life is not always going to be a crazy math-metal song! Sometimes it’s ‘Mouth Of Ghosts’ or ‘Widower’...“
Unfortunately, every single fan out there can do the same without having to come see us play. “To me what is exciting about the underground and about extreme music was the element of unpredictability that was always happening. You had pop music and you could listen to stuff on the radio and know what part was going to come next and what chorus was going to come next. You would know that when you got to the show that there would be this big production that would be planned out and everything would be choreographed. “But then, if you really made an effort to find it, there was this thriving underground where if you worked really hard and traded records and
tapes, as well as really making an effort to travel with friends to go see shows in dingy clubs and places that you weren’t exactly always comfortable in. You were able to find all this other, interesting stuff that was going on and all these interesting sub-cultures. “So, basically, now that all exists on a computer online and it’s just anything but what the underground and what extreme music was supposed to be about.” If it makes you feel any better though, you guys still do have a reputation for a live show exceeds anything that you do on record. I mean, the excitement and the unpredictability of what you do onstage is what sets you apart. And you don’t get that feeling just by watching a YouTube video. “That’s what we’ve always tried to and continue to do. Obviously our goals and our aspirations have changed a little bit from when we started based on the fact that this is our career and this is what we do. “We still are trying to always introduce that level of unpredictability and excitement and, I hate to say it, but a little bit of danger because the reality is that I never know what’s going to happen next, the crowd doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. “Every time we play a show, there is some unpredictable element that’s going to throw everything off and will be completely different to everything
we could expect. That’s why I love doing this, still do to this day!” When I spoke to Greg last week, we had a chat about the organic-ness of being onstage. What do you think about, if anything, while you’re onstage? “I don’t know what I think about, but I can tell you that every time I get onstage I’m still nervous! I’m always nervous and I still feel like there’s a nervous energy going on up on that stage. “There’s always a certain degree of this feeling that everyone’s out there to see us fail and not succeed. Even though they’re our shows and there are kids there to see us, I still have that feeling that we’re playing never exactly in our element and never
exactly comfortable. “We feel there are people out there who hate what we do. I don’t know if that’s a healthy thing or not, but you can either do one of two things to combat it. You can either crawl up in a shell or just turn that energy around – and that’s what we’ve always done.” It’s funny that you mention the nervousness because there is a noticeable anxiousness to your performance in particular, and I guess that’s what allows you to do things like climb speaker stacks. I don’t know if that’s a positive thing, though... “I guess so. It’s really hard because it’s not really something you think about a whole lot. There is something that definitely happens as you get ready to go up there. We know that our drummer’s going to hit those sticks and every time, like it or not, that next hour is ours.” Do you remember what you’ve done onstage when you get off or the next day? Or do you draw a blank? “I mean sometimes there are certain elements of things that stand out. I mean, yesterday Greg jumped onto my head, which hurt really bad and I do remember that. I probably forgot half my childhood after that, but I do remember that moment. “Every now and again there’s a special moment where a fan does something funny or interesting that is completely out of the ordinary and we all, afterwards, talk about who saw it and who didn’t.
“But for the most part, we’re kind of in our own world. Sometimes I have to even ask Greg if during a certain song the crowd was into it. I mean, I have no idea because I’ll usually be in a completely different world.
probably the same thing, which is our producer [Steve Evetts] working us to the bone. The fact is that he will never let us cheat, regardless of how much money is left and how much time is left and what our restrictions are. He still won’t care!
“I think in way that that’s allowed us to put on the show that we put on, regardless of the circumstance – whether we’re playing a big festival like Soundwave or if we’re playing in a small club or if we’re playing to three people like we did when we first started. You give it 110 per cent regardless.”
“He’ll make us do it over and over and over again, even when I’m screaming at him that he can just cut and paste it. I mean it’s the fourteenth guitar track so no one is going to know the difference! But at the end of the day it’s really rewarding too.”
What are the best and worst things about the Option Paralysis writing and recording experience? “The best and the worst thing are
I guess it would really help you with your live show as well. Once he’s got you playing things 14 or 15 times you would really know the track well by that point in time.
“Yeah, I mean we definitely all come out of the studio better players, that’s for sure.” Is there anything in particular that you drew inspiration from while you were writing the album this time around? “There was nothing in particular. I know that I was listening to a lot of old thrash and metal stuff that I had grown up on a lot and that I hadn’t really listened to in a long time. Things like Napalm Death, Carcass, Entombed, old Sepultura, Slayer, Metallica – things that just had an energy and a vibe that just doesn’t exist as much anymore. “So, a lot of people have quoted me as saying that this is our most metal record and have then been really
“I feel that this record is not only our best songwriting, but I feel happy with every aspect with it the most and I’ve felt that way since we came out of the studio. That’s pretty hard for someone like me to say.” You’ve got a new drummer with Billy Rymer for this album and I remember seeing him play with you guys at the Soundwave Sideshows and being blown away by how quickly he had picked up these ridiculous drum riffs that he is expected to play! “Yeah, he’s amazing and we’re really excited. We’re a really good team right now.”
surprised by the amount of melody and things like that going on, on the record. But the truth is that that stuff was really inspiring, but not in the way that we were going to write a record that sounded exactly like that.” One of the things that I’ve sort of noticed about Option Paralysis is that is seems like a sort of middleground between Miss Machine and Ire Works. Works. I don’t mean that in a bad way). It just seems like you’ve found a happy medium between the two. “I think that, for me, what I’m most proud of is that we’ve gotten better at doing what we do, what we’re known for, and incorporating new things in a way that’s a little more seamless and a little more cohesive. “The truth is that we’ve always just
tried to be better and better songwriters, writing music that’s honest and real. So I think that when people and critics say to me that it sounds more cohesive or it flows well, what that represents to me is that we’re getting better at our craft. And better at incorporating more elements into it as well. I guess that constantly writing that same, typical Dillinger style song over and over is going to eventually get boring. “Oh, absolutely! We couldn’t do this as a career and present it honestly if we kept writing the same song over and over. The truth is that I don’t think that any band can honestly do that because life is just not like that. “Life is ups and downs. Life is not always going to be an extreme, crazy
math-metal song! Sometimes it’s ‘Mouth Of Ghosts’ or ‘Widower’. That’s just us trying to write music that means something to us.” Every band sort of progresses towards what they feel is the way they ultimately want to sound like, and I guess if you don’t progress there’s no point doing it. Do you feel like this is the closest you’ve come to the ultimate Dillinger sound or the closest you’ve come to being the best band you can be? “I mean, we say it every record and I’ll say it again, but this record represents the best Dillinger that you can get. I definitely feel the most happy with this record as a whole, regardless of whether it’s true or not that it is our best.
What did Billy bring to the sessions that was maybe a bit different to what Chris or Gil had brought previously? “I think the main thing was an innocence, like an appreciation for his position. He also brought an energy that was both simultaneously confident and nervous and paranoid at the same time because of the shoes that he had to fill and his personality in general. “That’s the main thing. I mean, obviously he brought technical ability but there’s just this willingness to both rise to occasion and just do what’s best for the whole, which is why we’re so happy.” You just mentioned then that Billy brought a kind of nervousness to playing with you guys. Does it spin you out that people and fans hold you guys in that kind of high esteem?
“It really does, because we’re not really that big a band. It’s not like we’re Slipknot or have sold millions of records. But the fact that people that are true fans are such die-hard fans respect us so much and then that people in big bands also respect what we do regardless that we’re not a giant, money-making machine, that means a lot. “It means that we’re doing something right if fans and people we respect in the industry hold us in high regard. We definitely don’t take it for granted.” I have to ask about the decision to not re-sign with Relapse and to go out on your own. Do you still feel like that was the best decision you guys could make? “Yeah, we honestly haven’t made a whole lot of decisions about our future other than we just want to have more flexibility and control over what we do. That’s it. The decision not to sign a traditional record deal was just that.
cessity. The truth is that if you want to talk straight up numbers, dollars and cents, unless there’s someone out there that’s going to really make us a giant band, nobody getting involved is worth it. “There’s nobody out there in this day and age that could do that much for you, more than you could do for yourself, unless they really are going to, like I said, increase your income by so much that the amount of percentage they take and the amount of money they lose by not being as frugal as you would be with your own affairs, is worth it. “On top of that, if they’re dealing with a band like us, that person is going to have to do that while still allowing us to maintain a certain amount of artistic freedom. So, for us it just doesn’t make sense at the point to go that route. Keeping control over things and just doing things our way is not only more satisfying, but it’s allowing us to make a living and survive as well.”
“We really knew the state of the industry and the way that we had done things in the past that we could only enhance our experience in this band by taking on more control on a business front so that we can be just as creative in how we produce our music and how we present it people.”
What’s the best thing, for you, about touring? “Honestly, for me the best thing about touring is the fact that you get to get home. It’s such an amazing thing to be living this lifestyle and it’s also an amazing thing to be able to appreciate what you have at home.
How important is it for you guys to maintain your autonomy over your business affairs and your music? Especially at this point in your careers. “It is important, and part of it is out of choice while part of it’s out of ne-
“Most people live their whole days for two days a week and maybe a two week vacation, and most people will live for those two days where they’re probably paying bills or fixing the shingles on their house and then
a two week vacation. “For us, that’s our life. There is no weekend and there is no vacation. We just do what we love all the time, and occasionally we really, really appreciate that two weeks or two days a week that we’re home. And that’s a beautiful thing.” It’s interesting that you say the best thing about touring is coming home, because it leads into the question as to whether you prefer writing or touring. Everyone inevitably says touring… “There is a thing where people who have been on tour for a while start to feel a little bit creatively restricted, because you’re here playing old songs and almost kind of going through almost like a performing circus while you’re on tour.
like we couldn’t write another record. Then, like I said, we go out on tour and start to feel creative again. “We don’t really think that far in advance. We usually pretty much take it day by day and that’s what we’ve been doing for years! But we definitely, overall, probably feel at any given time that we know that somewhere in our heart that next year we’ll be doing it all over again. “Even though we know that the reality is that it could all end tomorrow, we also know that two years from now, if someone asked us what we were doing, this would probably be it.”
How much longer do you plan on keeping this up? And I don’t just mean Dillinger, I mean creating music in general. “But, again that’s another great thing “I can’t see an end to it at this point, about touring: you can sit at home and for many years, especially leadafter writing a record for months or ing up to my 30’s, it was something years and never pick up a guitar, but I questioned a lot and I think we all after being on tour for a couple of did. But now that we have kind of weeks or a couple of months you do crossed the hump and we’re doing start to feel the itch to create. this to the extent that we’re a career band – this is what we do. “It’s almost like part of the process. You need to have touring to writing “We recently collaborated with to recording and doing it all over someone named Mike Garson [who again as a process, because it’s all contributes piano parts on ‘Widower’ important and one always enables and ‘I Wouldn’t If You Didn’t’] who the other.” is in his late 60’s and is still playing professionally, even playing on I guess figuratively more than literDillinger Escape Plan records. Seeally, but what’s next for you guys? Is ing his enthusiasm and excitement there much more that you’ve got left to collaborate made us realise that we could do this as long as we want, to cross off the Dillinger to do list? really. At least to some degree.” “I don’t know. After every record we all come out exhausted and feeling
GREG PUCIATO “If I wanted to spend an entire show sitting in a rocking chair and that was legitimately what I wanted to do, that to me would be more punk rock than running around smashing shit up, if the smashing was pre-meditated...�
“What time is it over there?” It’s 10:00am on a Friday morning. “Oh shit! That’s a little early. I apologise for that because sleeping is probably one of my all-time, favourite things to do!” Even more than playing in the band? “It depends what of the day it is, you know. If it’s before nighttime, then I would rather be asleep. I go to bed at like eight in the morning and wake up at like 3:30pm.” I’ve noticed that from your MySpace blog posts. “Yeah, yeah, exactly! At seven in the morning in when I’m most creative and amazing stuff happens! The point is that I can’t do anything in the daytime. I can only do business shit during the day, like that side works during the day, but I can’t be creative when the sun is up at all. “You know what I think it is? I think that in your brain something happens that makes, at least for me, drawing weird connections and alliterations and allusions to things that you wouldn’t normally do during the daytime, a whole lot easier. At like two in the morning, your brain works better in that more abstract way. There’s got to be some science behind it.” So start with the serious stuff, what exactly does Option Paralysis mean to you? “Option paralysis is a term that means that state where you have so many choices that you end up making none. It was actually coined in a
book written like 40 years ago called Generation X, and it’s something that I feel is very pertinent to what’s going on around us, right now in the world. “I mean, we’ve had obviously massive technological advance and innovation over the last hundred years. I don’t think that’s a bad thing – I’m not saying in any way, shape or phone that technology is bad because I love cell phones, I love the internet and I love everything that has made our lives much, much easier and more convenient. “But at the same time, I think that because of the constant bombardment from marketing and technology allowing you to be constantly plugged in, there needs to be more of a conscious effort to retain the core of the human experience. That’s the five senses and human interaction and going out and actually experiencing things. “It becomes much harder now to create good art because everything is so convenient. You don’t have to leave your bedroom: you can watch bands on YouTube, you can make music on your computer. Everything you want to, you can basically do now, whereas 10 or 20 years ago you would have to get on a train and go to the city to go see a band play. You would meet up with your friends, play music too loud in a garage on a hot afternoon. “It’s more of an observation of the convenience of the way things have become.”
friends and it will say, ‘Music coming soon!’ It’s like, what do you mean ‘Music coming soon’? They’re not even a fucking band yet because you haven’t written any songs. “All the things that we had to go through are reversed. The attention has been taken off of the music itself and has been put more onto some overall concept of being in a band rather than actually doing it!”
You raise the point about the contrast between 10 years ago and now. You’ve been in the band for nine years, so what have you noticed change about music in that time? “I feel like that time period was the tail end of a long-standing thing as far as overall music-making goes. I mean, in the time that we’ve been a band so many sub-genres have eaten themselves into the ground. There’s so much emphasis on the end result that isn’t music – the music isn’t considered the end result anymore. “Music is almost like a part of how to get from here to there, and for us and for people before music was always the point. You would get together with your friends and write awesome songs.
“At night, you would go out and see shows and be inspired by those bands, then take everything that you were experiencing in your life and channel it into your music. And then, after you got your shit together and actually managed to sound like a band and have cool songs with something to say, then you would start to play shows and actually be a band. “Now, you have a bunch of kids together that decide to start a band. The first thing they do is come up with a name and create a MySpace page and take pictures of themselves and choose their influences. And this is all before they’ve even written a song! Then they’ll literally put up a MySpace page with pictures and a band name, start collecting
One thing I always ask bands is how the internet helped them get a foothold, but you guys would have been established as a band before the big internet explosion actually happened so I imagine your answer to the question, ‘How has the internet helped Dillinger out?’ would be a lot different to those bands? “That’s a really polite way of saying that we’re really fucking old, by the way! “Even though the internet has been really instrumental for us, I’m really glad that we were around before the explosion, so to speak. It’s the same thing as when you hear producers making records on Pro Tools and they make them digitally. I think the best producers are the ones that learned what to do before Pro Tools and now use Pro Tools because it’s a tool for them. A lot of the guys that started producing in the last few years are producing music that they see on a screen rather than listening to it. “For us, it’s a similar thing. We were already kicking ass and we were already being a band before this.
We didn’t have all these crazy tools like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter. To us, those things are something that’s a bonus. It’s a neat way for us to have control over connecting with our fans and doing cool stuff for them that a record company couldn’t do because it would be too impersonal. “I love it! I love the ability to cut through the middle-man and talk directly to our fans. But at the same time, we use that as a tool to supplement the point of our band, which is still coming to see us play and still getting together and writing good songs together. There’s never been a point in time where we’ve thought to ourselves that we need to get as many MySpace or Facebook friends as possible. “We have a huge internet presence, I think, because we’ve approached it the right way. It’s definitely been instrumental for us but, at the end of the day, if you get everybody’s attention then once you have it have nothing to say, or worse, nothing of substance to say, you’re band is only going to operate on a circus level and you’ll lose that attention anyway. You have to build the core up before you can start using these tools.” Are you guys planning on doing the limited edition t-shirts for this album? “Yeah, we will. That’s something that we did ourselves and it really, honestly, took a lot of time to do. It’s very involving because it’s not like we’re sitting at the end of the day and someone sends us a design and
we sign off on it and someone else does it all. “We were involved in the inception of every design, we printed out all the envelopes, we took all the packages to the post office – we did every, single thing ourselves asides from actually sewing the t-shirts. Right now having just put out the new record, being on tour and all that shit means that maybe halfway through the album cycle we’ll do that.” The fact that you did everything yourselves with the t-shirts links in with your decision not to resign with Relapse, so the question then is how important is it for you guys to do everything yourselves and have as much control as possible over what you do? “It’s extremely important. I feel like, just from an industry standpoint (even if there is an industry anymore) there are two major things you need to have in any situation and during any tumultuous time. The best things that you can be to survive are flexible and self-reliant. “The more people you rely and the more people you need for your existence, the worse off you’re going to be because people are going to fall by the wayside left and right. And if you’re not flexible enough to roll with the changes when the changes come through, then you’re going to die too. “We recognised that, from a business standpoint, pretty early on. It just doesn’t make sense for us to have somebody else super involved
and it doesn’t make sense for us to sign traditional contracts where we’re locked in for three records to a business model that probably won’t even be the same three months from now. “From a creative standpoint it’s also extremely important, because the bigger we get the easier it is to kind of make little compromises here and there, when someone says things might be easier whether it is the best thing for the band or the music or not. “But for us, this is what we care about. We’re not in a band to go on tour and party or to have some other non-intrinsic benefit. We’re in a band because we love doing this – we love what we’re doing, we love The Dillinger Escape Plan, it means something to us. It’s not just a hobby that we had when we were young and in our twenties, and that we’re going to have another ‘real job’ when we get old. “This is not just what we do, this is who we are, so to us doing all this extra stuff and being autonomous means we have less time in the day for our personal lives, but like I said, this is our lives.” What were the best and worst things about the Option Paralysis writing and recording processes for you? “Well for me, personally, the worst thing for me is a double-edged sword. The writing process takes a lot out of you. It’s emotional and it’s draining because you’re immersed in it all day long, trying to write lyrics
or whatever. You’re a writer, so you know what I mean. Sometimes you can write for hours and hours and hours before you even start to chip away at the shell of something that might be good. So, it’s very draining from that standpoint.
to make a better version of Ire Works or Miss Machine. This is a different band than the band three years ago, not because we have different members, but because we are different people in our lives. So to me, the most important thing is to make the best, most honest record you can make.
“But that’s also the best part of it, because you end up digging into your subconscious and getting something “If you make the most honest record, good out that you wouldn’t have got- then you’re not making the better reten if you hadn’t taken that time.” cord, because they’re totally different records. I feel that this is the most I know everyone says it about their honest record we’ve ever made. It’s most recent record, but do you honthe record where we kind of got out estly feel that this is the best work of our own way the most and weren’t you guys have done? really thinking about what other “You know what, I really hate talking people would think or whether or not like that because to me it sounds we should do this or go in this direclike sport. We’re not really competing tion. We just pretty much said fuck with ourselves and we’re not trying it, we’re 30, we don’t care! We’ll do
what we want.” To me it’s a really interesting album in the sense that it’s a middle ground between Miss Machine and Ire Works. Works. I mean, those two albums stand as kind of the two opposing ends of the Dillinger spectrum, and then Option Paralysis kind of stands as an amalgamation of the two. Is that something you agree with? “That’s something that I’ve been hearing more of, but it’s not something that we were aware of when we were writing the album. I just think that we’ve gotten better at trying to merge all our influences together without having to split them. “On Ire Works and Miss Machine we didn’t know how to do things like electronics without having to do a whole separate song. We didn’t know how to write melodies and hooks without writing a pop song. We didn’t really understand, because we’re not from that world. We know how to write a crazy, fast, obnoxious, Dillinger song because that’s what we do. That might seem difficult to most people, but for us that’s second nature. “So working with all these other outside influences, those were the things that were hard for us and the only way for us to be good at them was to compartmentalise them on those two records. “But I do think that on this record, now that I think about it, we took a lot of the abstract, compartmentalised stuff, like the pop and electronic songs on Ire Works, and moved them into the songwriting that Miss Ma-
chine had.” I’ve got a question that’s particularly pertinent to you, about your vocals. This time around there’s a lot more variation in what you do with your voice – a lot more clean, sung parts rather than just screaming. How much more fun is it for you to change things up and perform these different vocal parts? “It’s much more gratifying because I don’t walk around screaming. I mean, I love singing! I’ll go to karaoke bars for hours and hours on end. Screaming is pretty much one emotion pushed as far as you can go and I started to realise a few records ago, that if you start on 10 and then you stay on 10, there’s nowhere for you to go. You can’t go to 11! The thing is that then if you drop down to six, it’s underwhelming because people are
numbed at 10 so the six bums you out. “You have to keep your average around like a seven so that if you choose to scream it goes up to 10 and if you choose to go a falsetto vocal and drop down to three, it’s all still interesting. You don’t numb people. “For me as a performer, it’s way more gratifying because I feel like I’m a good singer and I hate to feel like everyone sees The Dillinger Escape Plan as just some guy running around on stage screaming his balls off and breaking things.” Speaking of breaking things, where did you find that gem of a new drummer in Billy Rymer?
“He’s a freak! We totally lucked out with him. We started 2007 with Chris Pennie, 2008 with Gil Sharone and then 2009 with no drummer. We have gone through three really phenomenal drummers in the past three years. “But Billy really is on another level. We had reached out to a bunch of really famous, known drummers and had people reaching out to us who were very known and auditioning. They were all people that could play the songs, but no one had the total package – they were missing the spark. “There’s something about session players and studio players that are really good technically, but they just don’t have any soul and that’s kind
“Having Billy involved, I don’t want to keep getting rid of deadweight. Right now I feel like we have the right mix of people to keep this going on.” You spoke about the lifestyle. Is it tougher on the personal life or the creative aspect of the band? Where does it impact the most? “It’s more tough on a personal level. It’s not live we’ve ever creatively had issues with people. It’s just that, personally, people get beat down by this lifestyle and they realise that it’s more than they can handle. That’s honestly the problem.”
of why they end up being session players. They don’t have any fire of their own to really create something. “Billy came at the last possible second – we already had a guy in place that could do the whole set and we were pretty ready to move forward, even though he wasn’t perfect because we figured we could make him the right guy down the line. Then Billy came recommended to us by a mutual acquaintance and I didn’t even want to audition him because we had already spent too much fucking time auditioning drummers and we already have a guy that can play the songs, even though he might not be perfect. “Ben was actually adamant that we see this kid because he saw a video
of him and recognised that he had IT. I thought we were wasting our time, but then after five minutes of playing with Billy we knew that he was the guy. His mess-ups were more impressive than when the other guys got it right just because he was playing with so much fire. He’s just such an anxious, stressful kid and he just channels that into his playing, which is perfect for us because it just makes everything feel more explosive!” Does having a new member in the band really revitalise things that much? “If they’re the right member, yeah, because it’s like pruning a tree. I don’t count losing members as a bad thing. Unless they got injured because that’s a different thing,
we lose members because they don’t want to be there anymore or because we don’t want them to be there anymore. They’re some sort of deadweight. “This lifestyle really grinds people down really quickly, the music grinds people down and playing this music every night is just physically and emotionally demanding. It crushes your personal life completely! “You just have to be the right type of person to do this all the time. So when someone is deadweight you have to get rid of them or they become a cancer. They’ll complain constantly and become really stressed and negative, and it influences other people.
Just to talk about touring for a bit, and this goes back to seeing you throw road cases from the tops of massive speaker stacks at the Roundhouse a few years ago, but what (if anything) goes on in your head when you’re on that stage? “Absolutely nothing and that’s the point! If you start to think about anything, and that’s in any part of the creative process whether a song or a moment in a show, if you’re thinking at all, it’s already corrupted and it’s already not pure. “At random times while we’re playing, I’ll catch myself thinking about something really quickly, like if I pick up a mike stand and for one second think about throwing it, it totally kills the mood and I just put the mike stand down and walk away. It has to be a pure expression otherwise it becomes theatre and contrived. “I mean, if there was a show and I wanted to spend that entire show sitting in a rocking chair and that was
legitimately what I wanted to do, that to me would be more punk rock than running around smashing shit up, if the smashing was pre-meditated.” That’s awesome! I really hope I do get to see you sitting in a rocking chair, while performing here in Sydney! “It’s getting to that point. I’ve got so many injuries just from the last few weeks, so that would probably come sooner rather than later. But it would probably bum people out though…” How much of a show can you remember after the fact? “Almost nothing, honestly. Like when we did that stuff with Nine Inch Nails in Australia last year, I didn’t remember it. That’s one of the things that I like the most about YouTube, is that everything is documented, so that after that Nine Inch Nails performance was done I could look at it on YouTube and remember. “In fact, my memory of that show is the YouTube video not the actual performance. If you’re in the right moment and mindset, you shouldn’t be in any state to remember it because it should just be pure expression. I can remember before the show and I can remember after the show, but the actual show is just transcendental.” So what’s next for you guys? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, how much more do you feel there’s left for Dillinger to achieve? “I guess it’s not so much of a game plan as it is just knowing when to stop. For me, I feel like we’re still really excited to play with one an-
other. We have a lot creatively that we’re still figuring out individually and together. We’re still stimulated by playing with one another. Like if Billy does something cool or Ben does something interesting or brings something new to the table, it’s not boring to me yet. “I think the key is not to really chart your progress so much as it is to know when it’s not there anymore. I don’t ever want to put something out because I feel that the Dillinger Escape Plan is a brand or like a career. “Obviously it is our careers now, but it’s not the same as being a banker or a lawyer or something like that because it isn’t something that we have to do. Then the second that art becomes something that you have to do commercially, it’s dangerous because it’s hard for people to get out of it. “So what it will be is one day we will be writing and then one or two songs in we’re going to realise that we’ve done all this before and that there’s no real point in doing this. Like I said, if it starts to feel like theatre or if I don’t feel like I have the energy to go in this direction creatively anymore, I don’t want to write this music and scream and run around, I just want to stop at that point. “I can’t imagine anything more miserable than being on tour for a year and a half playing songs every night that you don’t believe or performing when your heart isn’t really in it. That would be horrible!”
“Screaming is pretty much one emotion pushed as far as you can go and I started to realise a few records ago, that if you start on 10 and then you stay on 10, there’s nowhere for you to go. You can’t go to 11!”
ESSENTIAL LISTENING
UNDER THE RUNNING BOARD EP CALCULATING INFINITY (1998) RELAPSE
(1999) RELAPSE
IRONY IS A DEAD SCENE EP
This is the three-song EP that started the whole mythology of the Dillinger Escape Plan. Under The Running Board belies the history prior to this that is shrouded in mystery.
If you were shocked into submission but the Under The Running Board EP, EP, the prepare to find your brains on the wall on the other side of the room after you here Dillinger’s debut full-length, Calculating Infinity. nity
The main thing that you need to know about this EP is that the vocals were performed by none other than Mr Mike Patton (which is where the Patton worship the band is known for comes to full fruition). Following the departure of Dimitri Minakakis, the band were between vocalists setting the stage for this four-song collaboration.
What it does establish, however, is everything we’ve come to expect of a Dillinger album to this day, almost 12 years on!
Everything is just more explosive and more brilliant, which just goes to show that this is a band bent on progression, not just in terms of sound, Starting with ‘The Mullet Burden’, this song show- but also in terms of energy, atmosphere and cases the jaw-dropping energy and aggression sheer technical musicianship. It also sees the that accompanies everything the band do. band moving towards a type of rhythmic melody that gets a little lots in the aggression of the ‘Sandbox Magician’ introduces the melodic, vocals and the frenetic guitar-playing. The main catchy riffs that make some tracks more palatable point is that it does start throwing hints at what is to the casual listener, as well as the jazzy breakto come. downs that have become Dillinger’s trademark. Then there is the diversity of the riffing. A riff will Then there is ‘Abe The Cop’. The longest song on be repeated for a few passages before moving the EP (at 3:12). With heart-attack inducing drum- onto something else. And the whole time it is ming, exceptional guitar work and powerful vocals inhumanly precise while ranging from metal-riffing accompanied by great lyrics, it’s no wonder that to brief jazzy interludes. The drumming demonthis track still occasionally features on set lists for strates the same diversity, while Dimitri’s vocals Dillinger shows even today. are raw, disturbing and just downright creepy.
(2002) EPITAPH
While the result is not the band’s best work, in my opinion, it does bear close contemplation. After all, this is Dillinger and Mike Patton we’re talking about! The music is tight and the musicianship is the first-rate quality to be expected from both parties. Whether it is Patton’s involvement or not, this is the first hint we get of the band’s movement towards incorporating conventional song structures with the Dillinger sound. There is more repetition and more of a verse-chorus structure. However the EP still retains the dischordant trademarks of the Dillinger style, especially on ‘When Good Dogs Do Bad Things’ (easily the best track).
MISS MACHINE
IRE WORKS
OPTION PARALYSIS
This was the first complete album that I heard and I haven’t looked back since! Miss Machine introduces Greg Puciato on vocals and sees the band starting to infuse wider influences into their music – for example, the melodic ‘Unretrofied’ and the jazz breakdown in ‘Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants’.
If you skipped the interviews and came straight to this page, you should probably go back and read them to understand just how important Ire Works actually is to the Dillinger discography.
If the level of progression from Ire Works to Option Paralysis is anything to go by, then I cannot wait to see what happens in three years time when album number five is released!
Probably their album with the broadest appeal, it saw the band experimenting with conventional pop song structures on tracks like ‘Milk Lizard’ and ‘Black Bubblegum’ while also exploring the lengths electronic music could enhance their music on ‘When Acting As A Particle’ and ‘When Acting As A Wave’.
While the electronic and pop influences on Ire Works were in your face, comprising in most cases of individual songs, on Option Paralysis Dillinger have managed to seamlessly meld these influences into their existing, trademark song-writing structure, especially on tracks like album-opener ‘Farewell, Mona Lisa’ and ‘Chinese Whispers’.
While not the most cohesive album as a whole, the individual tracks are incredible. ‘Mouth Of Ghosts’ and ‘Dead As History’ stand as two of the most incredible songs the band has ever written, and you only need to see them perform ‘Mouth Of Ghosts’ live to realise this!
The addition of Billy Rymer to the line-up has added a new vitality to the rhythm section in tracks like ‘Room Full Of Eyes’.
(2004) RELAPSE
With five years between this and Calculating Infinity it’s an understatement to say that this was “highly anticipated”. But it was worth the wait as with it brought extensive critical acclaim and melted so many faces with the explosive live show that accompanied it. From the explosive intro of ‘Panasonic Youth’ to the closing moments of ‘The Perfect Design’, Miss Machine established itself as the blueprint for the Dillinger that would follow – the perfect blend of raucous, nervous, spastic and ridiculously technical energy, with experimentation in melody and electronic touches added on for good measure. Of them all, this is my favourite album!
(2007) RELAPSE
For the traditional Dillinger fan, there is plenty here for you as well – album opener ‘Fix Your Face’ will literally rip your face off and ‘Party Smasher’ won’t leave a stick of furniture whole.
(2010) PARTY SMASHER/SEASON OF MIST
But the stand-out track, by far, is ‘Widower’. This is Dillinger like you’ve never heard them before – a six-minute, piano-driven epic that has Greg Puciato stretching his vocals to the limit and the entire band testings their skills as musicians and song-writers. And that is, in a nutshell, entirely what this album is about!
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