And when you think that maybe the band's overreached, and put the album's best song first only to disappoint us all, 'Sunshine The Werewolf' begins, immediately getting right in your face. This is the new noise, Refused undoubtedly would have conceded. When vocalist Greg Puciato screams out, 'The paragraph has never been so empty!' and then 'Evolution gave us a clock that's always winding down!', genuinely corrosive moments are happening. In that span, the technique and attitude we talked about above come raging out, without reserve. Head over to 1:18 of 'Panasonic Youth' and let it play to the end. 'Panasonic Youth' and 'Sunshine The Werewolf' especially stood out though, both songs possessing mad, in both senses of the word, cacophonies within them, songs within songs.ĭon't believe me? Go find your copy of Miss Machine. Miss Machine took Calculating Infinity's unhinged, unpolished force and used it for a good part of the record, with 'Panasonic Youth', 'Sunshine The Werewolf' and 'We Are The Storm' showing their incisor teeth and challenging even Calculating’s 'Sugar Coated Sour'. That’s the lesson Calculating Infinity imparted.Ģ004's Miss Machine is Calculating Infinity's 'proper' follow-up, even if the Mike Patton-fronted version of Dillinger Escape Plan released the, literally, insane Irony Is A Dead Scene in 2002. And when you hear all those fire-on-fire individual parts in succession and then realize they're all actually connected, making up an impossibly explosive whole. And yet, as you slowly learn each individual part, and appreciate those parts in isolation, the process has begun. But appreciating a Dillinger Escape Plan record is like learning a new language: at first everything's blurred - pieces running into each other - without any sense of cohesion or understanding. Ironically, this scribe's initial reaction on hearing Calculating Infinity in 2002 was disgust: 'Forget these guys,' I said, though expletives probably made up most of the sentence if we're being honest, 'this music doesn't even make sense.' It's a criticism that's been leveled often at the group, the listener overwhelmed by the hailstorm of sound that is any of the band's albums. As its title suggests, Calculating Infinity attempts the impossible over its 11 songs, the band soaring with the adrenaline-on-adrenaline of so many of the best debut records. Though two EPs and two splits preceded it, 1999's Calculating Infinity is where the story truly begins for Dillinger Escape Plan. 'I felt that people were like, 'What the fuck is all the hype about this band?They suck.' They were our own shows, but I went out feeling like I had to win this crowd over.' 'I always felt like people were at our shows to see us fuck up and not pull it off live,' guitar player and founder Ben Weinman told me during a backstage interview in Montreal in 2011. Menace, technique, middle-finger attitude and maybe even some razor-wire anxiety coat all of Dillinger Escape Plan's various identities, to glorious, upending effect. While 'Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants', 'Unretrofied', 'Black Bubblegum' and 'Milk Lizard' moved far beyond 'Jim Fear', '43% Burnt', 'Panasonic Youth' and 'Party Smasher', they're the opposite side of the same, severed coin. Even as Dillinger Escape Plan has rightly expanded past the initial mathcore parameters the band itself created (full disclosure: 'mathcore' is a term I dislike with a very real level of animosity), Dillinger has expanded on its own terms.

There's a track on Dillinger Escape Plan's latest album, Dissociation, called 'Apologies Not Included' and that song title could act as the band's eulogy now that such things are needed given the group's impending 'extended hiatus.' From writing music that is - even in its most accessible forms - not exactly the pinnacle of easy listening, to performing in ways that have caused innumerable physical injuries, Dillinger Escape Plan has never apologized, not even to itself it seems.

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