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For a few years now, discussion regarding The Dillinger Escape Plan has revolved around an opposition: the band’s earlier mathcore vs. its later pop flirtations. Option Paralysis (Season of Mist, 2010) does away with this opposition.
It’s a logical continuation of Miss Machine and Ire Works, the band’s previous albums with Greg Puciato. Essentially a younger version of Mike Patton, he has a range, and the band is wise to utilize it. Sometimes such utilization has seemed gimmicky: “We can do a quasi-radio song because we can!” Just because one can doesn’t mean one should. But Option Paralysis merges “can” with “should”. Now songs weave together elements of both. The band is becoming more comfortable with its chameleonic singer and identity.
The result is a delicious middle ground between sound and song. That was the real tension between mathcore (sound) and pop (song). Option Paralysis opts for the best of both worlds, ricocheting between that familiar rat-a-tat attack and Puciato’s crooning. Thus, it has no obvious Songs with a capital S like “Black Bubblegum”. But it does have an album’s worth of testing that border.
Many bands unintentionally test that border — the ones who almost know how to write songs. DEP already know how to do so. Not needing to prove that, they’ve focused instead on finding and being themselves.
. . .
. . .
That identity is, to put it bluntly, darkness. It’s not the cartoon version with skulls and pentagrams. It’s subtler, more of an undercurrent. Surprisingly, this thread has existed since the band began. Innumerable lineup changes have managed to preserve this thread; Puciato and his singing have grafted new strands onto it. DEP albums with Puciato are really about deep listening. Their production detail is staggering. Like its full-length predecessors, Option Paralysis is a world to get lost in.
The nature of that world is slightly mysterious. Ask Dillinger Escape Plan fans what the band is “about” (beyond breaking stuff onstage), and I’m not sure that they could answer. The lyrics of Option Paralysis offer one hint. Every song is addressed to the second person: “you”. The last major artist who did this? Nine Inch Nails — a huge influence on DEP, who’ve covered “Wish”, appeared onstage with NIN, and whose synths recall the brassy grime of The Downward Spiral. Puciato and Trent Reznor have more than big muscles in common.
Puciato’s heart isn’t on his sleeve, though. He seems to address multiple “you”s, and perhaps his narrators are unreliable. Such uncertainty befits the no-man’s land between song and sound that his bandmates traverse. Perhaps a more accurate term would be no-band’s land. Thanks to the growth of a mathcore subgenre that DEP helped spawn, and increasingly modern production and mastering that have rounded off the band’s edges, DEP are no longer extreme. They’re in an interworld of their own.
Amazon (CD, MP3)
eMusic (MP3)
Relapse (CD, LP, shirt)
Season of Mist (CD, LP, shirt)
Amie St. (MP3, currently under $4)
I agree with you on the fact that mixing mathcore with their more catchy elements is something they can do pretty well while writing songs that make sense, but, for now, I still think Ire Works had more equilibrium. This is one of those albums I know will grow on me so I’m not in a rush to get there…DEP must be listened at the correct moment, they are THAT special. At least for me.
I don’t know what happened to DEP after “Calculating Infinity” they’re just not the same, I wouldn’t mind change but not a 180deg. one, they are just too different for me, especially the clean vocals on the new album they just make me wanna listen to “Calculating Infinity” all day long so that I can forget that I listened to “Option Paralysis”.
I really want to like post-Dimitri DEP – and I’ve tried – but truth is, he was my favorite component of Calculating Infinity. Perhaps there is a right “moment” or mood for this stuff, but I haven’t found it yet.
Every nu-metal band also addressed their songs to “you.”
I also prefer Under The Running Board/Calculating Infinity when I feel like listening to DEP. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or the early shock or of the later records are actually worse, there are things that are offputting about them I guess but so are for the earlier records and they still work for me. The Running Board is like a soundtrack to a bipolar rape (and I’m not just being the usual metal-writer-hyperbolic “this record will crush you”, there’s a lot of audio cues suggestive of women in distress and the sort of interpersonal anger) and the other stuff are… a singer with a huge range either screaming nondescriptly over mathcore or doing a Patton impression over pop.
I agree with HopigDestroyer and Helm, but I’d still be willing to listen this once, just like with Ire Works.
I also agree with the previous posters. Every time Puciato starts with the clean vocals, I have to immediately stop listening. It’s just not the DEP that I originally liked. I wish I could like it, but I can’t.
Ire Works, and particularly »Black Bubblegum«, was the best album or song respectively that Faith No More never recorded.
To me it really is a logical continuation of all the good things about FNM, that somehow never really materialized with them.
I bought Option Paralysis the day it came out and it has yet to take hold of me as Ire Works did. But then again, that took time and many listens as well.
But in many cases that is what makes an album to take to the island: enough depth and room for interpretation to require many listens to finally »get it«.
Am I the only one who finds early DEP somewhat boring?
I’ve listened to this a couple times now and I fully admit it has some good parts, but like every other post-Calculating release it still just doesn’t do it for me. I remember when Miss Machine came out and I felt that exact same this-isn’t-happening feeling of shock and let down that I did when I saw The Phantom Menace… DEP really could’ve made it easier on everybody by just changing their name after Dimitri left.
really really like about half of this album. I like where they’ve gone, just don’t care for some of these songs.
this record has some of DEP’s most interesting sounds though: they make great use of strumming, where it sounds like an electric guitar, not plugged in, recorded via a mic.
I don’t know if I would use the word boring with respect to DEP, but I really can’t say I enjoy their sound much. I liked the EP w/ Patton on vox and some parts of Miss Machine, I think Ire Works was OKish, and I am really not getting OP at all. GP comes off sounding like Patton on some of the clean vox, but more often he sounds like a cross between Byron from God Forbid and the newer nasally Mastodon. Oh, and the hooks passed the girlfriend test!
The album is certainly interesting and a extension into the direction the band has ALWAYS moved towards.
And yes, we get it, everyone loved ‘Calculating’. We get you, you’re down. And yes, It’s one of my favorites of all time. But I think we can agree, Dillinger isn’t Metallica. This sound progression makes more sense and there is still plenty of bite. They already made ‘Calculating’…if they got lazy and made that record again, people would bitch even more.
Baggs, I am most interested in this “girlfriend test” of yours. Do tell more.
Also, “newer nasally Mastodon” = ouch!
@Chris – I don’t think anyone here is pulling the diehard “Everything After (first album) Sucked” card. I don’t envy the expectations DEP had after Calculating but my ears don’t particularly care to hear Patton-esque crooning over their brand of mindfuckery.
First time I recall listening to “mathcore” was after Terrorizer gave Drowningman’s Rock N Roll Killing Machine 10/10 – shortly thereafter I discovered DEP, and at the time I thought of DEP as Drowningman’s angry little brother… it seems that later DEP releases have moved towards what Drowningman was doing in 2000… this isnt bad or good, just is what it is’
…and for what its worth, the “girl friend test” is great… I only put on new stuff while making dinner, that way she is moderately distracted… So far Pelican has been “OK’d” at reasonably loud levels…
Girlfriend test – I played OP at moderate volume and watched her shriek in horror at the beginning of Mona Lisa, but the lady-friendly chorus came in and she was with it. In fact, I think she made the Mastodon vocal comparison. But yeah, I don’t playing everything for her, but whenever a band releases something a more commercial I play it for her. I don’t tell her who it is, but she will usually throw in a comment. On one hand it is cool because then I know what level of crazy metal I can get away with, but on the other hand it can make it a little less cool if girls like your metal and/or she laughs at your music and makes it hard to take it seriously.
Damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Hm.
Cosmo Lee this is the best take on this band I’ve ever read. I think your blog posts are way better than anything you do for a publication, I’m not sure what that speaks to.
It helps that I agree with you, but I don’t read the negatives so it feels like I agree often.
Conduit – Thanks for the kind words. On this site, I have full control over subject matter and word counts, and the ability to leverage multimedia. I can certainly perform better in print with subject matter not to my taste. J. Bennett is a master of that.
Whether or not you agree with me really doesn’t matter. People agreeing with each other is as boring as people fighting with each other. If I can provide a meaningful reading experience, then I am doing my job.
That’s it then! I’m sure there are editors and publishers elsewhere that you have to appease. J. Bennet is the shit, except that column he has in dB where you get to read an incoherent review of what his drug-mind thinks that month.
About agreeing… the only thing I can do with that statement is agree with you about agreeing being boring.