The Dillinger Escape Plan

Last Wednesday I went to see The Dillinger Escape Plan, one of my all time favorite bands. Judith scored 2 free tickets, one of the perks for working for a newspaper.

My less than subtle "OH MY GAWD you have free tickets..?! AWESOME! You are so lucky! You know If I had a free ticket I'd definitely give it to you....." assured me one of those tickets. I would have bought one anyway if I had to, but it is always nice to save a dollar where you can, and with the money we "saved" (?) we did go out and have some tasty mexican food beforehand.

The gig was opened up by "Poison the Well". I have a few of their album's and don't mind them at all, but have to admit the live show was fairly ordinary. I guess mainly the singer's performance. The screaming was fairly weak and he seemed always a little out of breath, and his singing was terrible. I think his voice was shot, so in that case I'm sure he did the best with what he had. Oh yeah, his between song banter was pretty bad too. I've only been to a few gigs here in Amsterdam, but I'm pretty sure that the locals must be pretty sick of the weed smoking stereotype. No. Just because we don't find your jokes funny does not mean we are all 'high or somethin'.

Anyways, Dillinger on the other hand were not suffering from any ailments, and did not need to rely on pointless banter to keep the crowd well entertained...

From about 3 seconds in (coincidentally the exact point in which I lost Judith in the sea of flailing arms, legs, hair and NOISE!) until the end, it was chaos! Great, epic, smile inducing, head nodding, air punching, amazing chaos!

The band, for those wondering, play a type of hardcore (with a good dose of screamed vocals and distorted guitars), mixed in with I guess jazz (strange complex timing signatures, jazzy breakdowns and super technical instrument playing). And across the past 2 albums they have incorporated more and more "accessible" melodic rock as well, with plenty of singing and more restrained music. There is also a lot of electronic music (glitchy stuff, in the vein of something like Aphex Twin) spliced throughout the current release, "Ire Works".

The (sold out) gig, in all its glory, focussed primarily on the more "up tempo" (read HEAVVVYYYY) songs, and the crowd were more than happy with that! The singer and 2 guitarists spent atleast half the show up on the barricades supported by the front few rows, and if not there the singer, Greg Puciato, was IN or ON TOP of the crowd, up on the speaker stacks, or at one point swinging from the water pipes running along the ceiling! And the rest of the time when they were playing in the more traditional "on stage" sense, there was a steady stream of stage divers running across and jumping from the stage around about them.

This went on for a full hour or so while I was nestled in to a tight little spot in the middle of the room, propped up by the barrier in front of the mixing desk about 10 metres back from the stage, just behind the mosh pit (aka danger zone).

The new drummer, Gil Sharone's performance would have silenced the few remaining "Chris Pennie can never be replaced" critics (if there are any left at all), and Greg has now I'd say shaken most of the "b-grade Mike Patton ripoff" comments. As if sounding like Patton is a bad thing anyway, but his delivery of "When Good Dogs Do Bad Things" was definitely a highlight of the set, and easily as good as Patton could do.

Overall the gig was amazing, as I've come to expect over the the past few years seeing and enjoying this bands music. My ears were blocked for days after, I assume that is just my body's natural attempt at keeping the music inside my head for as long as possible!