I will have forever whiffed on The Dillinger Escape Plan. When the New Jersey outfit were precision-chopping metal into tiny frenetic chunks of aggression and throwing them in the faces of audiences at basement shows in New Brunswick circa ’98-’99 for the Under the Running Board EP and Calculating Infinity, where was I? Up north in Morris Plains, working the second best job I ever had at KB Toys store #1051 at Rt. 10 and 202, missing it. I caught up in college and was working at The Aquarian Weekly in 2004 when they released their breakthrough second album, Miss Machine, but yeah. Given prime opportunity to check out one of their generation’s most influential and scorching metal bands in their earliest days wrecking basements and VFWs, and I just didn’t know. The internet was not what it is today, but they were on WSOU and guitarist Ben Weinman grew up like three-quarters of a mile from me. Few excuses to be made.

So I guess I always feel a little lame listening to The Dillinger Escape Plan, a little Johnny-comelately because I didn’t go to their first show or whatever, but hopefully these 25 years later my being a total poseur — maybe a dilettante? — can be forgiven. One of Us is the Killer was released in 2013 through Sumerian Records. For their early years they were a quintessential Relapse band, but that era had come to a close with Ire Works in 2007 and they’d begun their own imprint, Party Smasher, Inc., for 2010’s Option Paralysis, and worked with Season of Mist as well. Miss Machine crushed — it still crushes — but I fell off with Ire Works and probably in part because I feel bad about myself when I hear them, I never really got back on board. Add to that an awkward lunch one time with Weinman and then-frontman Greg Puciato for a Metal Maniacs feature, and yeah. Resigned, perhaps. I was never that cool and I never had enough friends to be hardcore.

They got tagged math metal all the time, and not unreasonably for the frenetic assault of which they were capable as a group, and fair enough for the gauntlet they seemed to be throwing down at every turn, challenging both the crowd and every other band in the room. But at the same time, after Puciato joined for Miss Machine, the palette they were working with grew immensely. I’ve always thought they were closer to jazz-metal, but that doesn’t sound cool so nobody would call it that. A lot of metal in the aughts was about the tradeoff between screaming and clean singing — that still exists in metal today, extrapolated from turn of the century metalcore, what was for five whole minutes called the ‘New Wave of American Heavy Metal’ in bands like Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, who came out around that time — but The Dillinger Escape Plan did it differently and more interestingly than just verse/chorus trades, and though the innovation had been made by the time they released One of Us is the Killer, the sense of the band pushing themselves physically and creatively remains fervent.

“Prancer” starts the record with jabs and screams and a big riff and seconds later they’re going full blast and rush, charge, twist, pummel; it’s all there. Songs like “When I Lost My Bet,” “Hero of the Soviet Union,” “Magic That I Held You Prisoner,” the instrumental “CH 375 268 277 ARS” and the duly furious apex of the five-minute epic “Crossburner” go to the root of The Dillinger Escape Plan in their plotted chaos. It’s not that the band aren’t under control — the rhythm section of bassist Liam Wilson and drummer Billy Rymer are here, then they’re there, then they’ve just dug into your eyeballs and you didn’t even know; congratulations! — but that their style was so much their own thing that it sounded that way anyhow. They weren’t the only killer technically minded band of the era, as Psyopus and Colin Marston‘s Behold!… The Arctopus hit around the same time, but short of Meshuggah or Neurosis, there aren’t many who’ve had the kind of genre-making impact.

And that’s all well and good, but it was the title-track of One of Us is the Killer that got me. I remain a sucker for an awesome hook, and “One of Us is the Killer” is unabashedly that. It’s not the only one on the record. Hell, “Paranoia Shields” is practically pop-punk, but “Nothing’s Funny” has lyrics that kind of sound like something an incel would put in a soon-to-be-banned subreddit, so let’s say it hasn’t aged well. Li’l toxic, maybe. But Puciato‘s range — you’ll recall in recent years he’s toured doing vocals alongside Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains — comes into play in the divergent character of these songs, taking cues from Mike Patton and Trent Reznor and mixing it with a nasal sneer that, being here, I can only think of as being North Jersey in its origins. The build and release of tension is there, different and more accessible than the dug-in scribbly sound of “Understanding Decay” and less drastic than the quiet/loud trades of closer “The Threat Posed by Nuclear Weapons,” and though “One of Us is the Killer” and “Nothing’s Funny” weren’t their first flirtations with pop and outside-genre elements, the band’s maturity and Steve Evetts‘ production/mix (Weinman also did some recording) assure a vibrant sweep in the listening experience. Then you get punched. And maybe kicked.

The Dillinger Escape Plan called it quits in 2017, but Weinman, Wilson and Rymer got back together last year with original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis and guitarist James Love to do reunion shows celebrating their earliest work, and they have festival dates listed through the summer. I have to wonder what a new album with Minakakis fronting would bring in terms of style and songs, but I haven’t heard and wouldn’t hear any murmurings of the band recording, and honestly, given that I’ve still never really dug into Option Paralysis or their last album, 2016’s Dissociation, there’s still more catching up for me to do. At least I’m consistent.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Well, The Pecan hasn’t punched anybody at school in I think three days now, so I’m going to call the week a win? I don’t know. It’s been a weird time. The Patient Mrs. has been working a lot, the kid’s been having trouble with a couple boys in her class being shitty to her, name-calling and such, and she’s got first-grade drama with some of the girls she’s friends with, so it’s a lot on her medicated, still-seven-years-old brain. Last week she jumped on the back of her lunch aide and needed to be picked up early. I kept her home last Friday. Sent her for a half-day Monday. She’s got a dentist appointment this morning, so she’ll go in late. Next week is Spring Break and that’ll be good for her, and The Patient Mrs. and I have a ‘team meeting’ at the school this afternoon to try and figure out what the fuck the situation is and how we can keep the momentum of the last few days going in a positive direction after the break. We’ll see.

That’s been very much on my mind, though. Lost sleep has been suitably mourned. I got up at 4AM today.

I remember doing that on purpose in Massachusetts when she was a baby. I’d be sitting at the square table against the kitchen wall in the condo, my head on the table, three-quarters asleep typing about some record or other, hopefully in some coherent fashion. Try to bang out as much as I could before she or The Patient Mrs. woke up; clear my head for the day to come while at the same time completely torpedoing my ability to cope by frazzling my tired brain. I’m a shitty parent and I feel like garbage all the time. This is more than narrative, and I’m not fishing for comments.

Next week is also Roadburn, which will be a welcome interruption to the routine and hopefully as rejuvenating as well as a tiring experience. I’ll see Kylesa, and it’s been a long time, so that’ll be good. I’m more excited to see friends, to be completely honest, but I’ll have the camera and will be covering wherever I end up. I haven’t looked at the day splits/schedule yet in any serious capacity. Might just wing it this year, which would be an experience in itself.

I fly out Tuesday, get into Tilburg on Wednesday, hopefully see Temple Fang that night and then it’s fest-fest-fest. Until then, Monday and Tuesday continue and conclude the Quarterly Review. April’s one thing right into the next, and I’ll tell you honestly that after I get back from Roadburn, the remainder of the month is already completely slated with reviews and premieres and such, so yeah. Thanks if you keep an eye.

And again, thanks for reading as always. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate and buy Obelisk merch.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch