Dillinger Escape Plan

The Dillinger Escape Plan are one of the most fascinating bands to emerge from the American scene in the second half of the 90s. After some uncertain early steps within the independent hardcore scene, the band released a couple of excellent EPs, which paved the way for their debut album "Calculating Infinity", dated 1999.

We're at the tail end of the Nineties, and this record represents a wave of freshness and innovation for metal in the broadest sense of the term, as well as a cornerstone of the mathcore movement, alongside at least two other landmark works released in those same years: "We Are The Romans" by Botch and "Jane Doe" by Converge.

This full-length is the most influential and original record in The Dillinger Escape Plan's discography, the one that laid down the blueprint for their sound, a blueprint that would endure in the years to follow and that countless other bands would draw from.

The New Jersey quintet stand out within the melting pot of contemporary metal by building on the groundwork laid by Death and Cynic, who, between the late Eighties and early Nineties, delivered hyper-technical death metal seasoned with elements drawn from jazz and fusion.

The Dillinger Escape Plan modernize these elements starting from a distinctly jazz-based approach to guitar writing, and manage to push even further thanks to a range of contaminations spanning grindcore, industrial, prog, and the most disparate shades of metal. A remarkable open-mindedness and solid grounding in music theory are the hallmarks of musicians whose performing skill and technical prowess are certainly on par with "virtuoso" bands - an adjective that might spring to mind but that doesn't actually suit the band in question, nor the entire scene they belong to.

The band also shows they've fully absorbed the hardcore tradition harking back to essential acts such as Black Flag or Husker Du, a tradition that has undergone various developments over the years and that they steer towards a fascinating new maturity. On top of that, they extend the complex structures of math-rock into new dissonant articulations, and reconcile the urgency of heavy metal with the refined architecture of free jazz.

All this is "Calculating Infinity": a vicious, corrosive cocktail that lets Dillinger Escape Plan rise up as champions of mathcore and major innovators of extreme metal in the late Nineties.

This is a record that can hurt you, one that ambushes the listener without warning. It's a burst of calculated chaos, pure adrenaline. Starting with the celebrated "Sugar Coated Sour", one of the band's cult songs, the tracks all kick off out of nowhere, like a bolt from the blue, throwing us off balance by alternating sudden accelerations with cathartic free-jazz digressions that give us just enough time to catch our breath.

This is a record with real impact, one that doesn't do things by halves: blisteringly fast, relentless drum rhythms lay the groundwork for razor-sharp, abrasive guitar riffs, all topped off by the screams of Dimitri Minakakis, dripping with rage and violence.

The band's hallmark is its heavy reliance on complex meters and difficult rhythms, resulting in unconventional structures and a particular refinement in the songwriting.

Tempo changes come thick and fast, and the flashes of virtuosity are never out of place - there's more to these grooves than technique for its own sake; the imagination on display is just as remarkable.

Further tricks of the trade include the frequent use of odd (and even syncopated) time signatures and an unusual approach to accents - complications that might suggest pointless overreaching or empty ambition. Not here, though: every track feels exactly as it should be, with no extra effort required to grasp it.

There are few moments of peace, of apparent calm granted to the listener - just enough time to lick your wounds. Even here, though, the quintet doesn't hold back. Case in point: "#..", a kind of premonitory ambient-math-industrial piece, and "Weekend Sex Change", where Chris Pennie's star shines brightest - a drummer capable of fusing death-metal, funk, prog, jazz and more into something as incredible as it is unusual. Also worth noting are the title track, an original slice of math-funk that soon erupts into the band's trademark hardcore fury, and "The Running Board", where the band plays with "stop and go" dynamics and "loud-soft" contrasts.

"43% Burnt" comes across as a tribute to death-metal filtered through jazz, undoubtedly an ambitious move, but the result is one of the album's high points. "Destro's Secret", on the other hand, is math-rock's latest destination, in an ever bolder new guise, built around a hypnotic, paralyzing guitar riff.

"Clip The Apex... Accept Instruction" and "4th Grade Dropout" build into an uncontrollable crescendo of ferocity that culminates in the utter nihilism of "Variations On A Cocktail Dress".

The whole record is steeped in an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere, made even heavier by the complete absence of melodic openings.

Starting with the very notion of "song form", which has no reason to exist in a context like this, Dillinger Escape Plan set about annihilating any sense of convention, while still preserving the organic cohesion and rationality of the whole. The instruments, in fact, are in perfect sync with one another, and even in the most chaotic, complex and hard-to-decipher tracks, there's an incredible underlying order - a kind of connective thread tying the guitar parts to the rhythm section and welding everything into a single entity.

"Calculating Infinity", ultimately, stands as a kind of musical transposition of the eternal dichotomy between chaos and order, played out through a constant process of construction and destruction, structuring and de-structuring. A tension never illustrated so effectively.

Sitting halfway between the underground and the mainstream, "Calculating Infinity" won praise from both camps and still carries that genuine spark typical of many bands' early sound, one that's easily lost as the years go by and popularity grows. When it comes to Dillinger Escape Plan, though, the matter is rather contentious, given how much debate was sparked by the polished sound of "Miss Machine" (2004) and the melodic, experimental touches of "Ire Works" (2007), which split both critics and fans.

Solid and convincing on record, the band proves even more so on stage. Capable of delivering physical, incendiary, uniquely devastating live shows, they've been named among the greatest live bands of all time. It was precisely thanks to their on-stage prowess, in fact, that the five-piece caught the attention of a great independent label like Relapse Records, as well as Mike Patton (ex Faith No More), who invited them to join him on tour with Mr. Bungle and later guested on "Irony Is A Dead Scene" (2002).

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17/02/2008