#3 Album of the Year
- Story by J. Bennett
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works (Relapse)
We said it before and we’ll say it again: One gets the feeling that the DEP’s cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You” from last year’s iTunes-only Plagiarism EP rubbed off a little bit, because vocalist Greg Puciato perfectly invokes the Floridian falsetto spirit of Teen People’s (and Cosmo’s) Sexiest Man on “Black Bubblegum,” the third track on the band’s so-good-it’s-fucking-ridiculous album, Ire Works. When told that this particular gem of a quirky, heavy pop song—along with the horn-stab-happy, Faith No More-chorusy “Milk Lizard”—are our current personal Ire Works favorites, Puciato’s incredulity is palpable, even over the phone from a terminal at LAX. “Are you kidding, man? Are you serious?” Assured that we are, in fact, totally fucking serious, Puciato’s smile is audible. “That’s funny, because I know those are the two songs that Dillinger fans are gonna give us the most shit for.”
But fuck those people. The important thing is that the men of Dillinger—Puciato, guitarist/mastermind Ben Weinman, bassist Liam Wilson and new drummer Gil Sharone—have made the record that those of us who loved the huge, infectious choruses of “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants” and “Unretrofied” from 2004’s Miss Machine not-so-secretly wanted them to make the very instant we were exposed to the band’s extensive non-math capabilities. As it turns out, those two tracks weren’t anomalies—they were glowing harbingers of all the best songs on Ire Works. “The point of songs like ‘Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants’ and ‘Unretrofied’ was to free us so we didn’t have to write Calculating Infinity over and over again,” Puciato explains. “And we saw people jump ship, but those people were gonna turn on us eventually, anyway. So why bother to try to appease them?”
But Calculating Infinity enthusiasts, have no fear: Ire Works has plenty of high-velocity algebra workouts and blast-capped face-peelers—like “Nong Eye Gong,” “Lurch,” opener “Fix Your Face” and “82588,” the numbers of which just happen to correspond to the release date of Metallica’s …And Justice for All… “The lyrics have nothing to do with the title,” Puciato explains with a laugh. “I just wanted to put an homage in there to one of my favorite records of all time.”
Still, it’s the catchy, less technical jams (add Ire Works’ “Dead as History” to this list) that Dillinger seem to be enjoying these days. “Dude, we can shit out songs like ‘Nong Eye Gong’—it’s the other stuff that’s more challenging to us,” Puciato says. “I’m all about making a record that makes me wanna drive a hundred miles an hour and throw the steering wheel out the window, but there are other times when I just wanna listen to the Rolling Stones or Carly Simon or Elton John.
“Emotionally and artistically, you can’t be really satisfied doing the same thing forever,” he adds. “I understand that people want Slayer to sound like Slayer, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If Tom Araya started playing a clarinet, I would be pissed, too. But music isn’t a sport, man. It’s not meant to be, ‘Let’s see who can sit in their room and play scales the fastest.’”
