REVIEW: The Dillinger Escape Plan's "Ire Works"
Mark Hensch
Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: Arts
The gradual erosion of pop music continues with The Dillinger Escape Plan's glorious third full-length album. Entitled "Ire Works," its blitzkrieg 38 minutes blazes past with all the subtlety of an exploding gasoline pipe.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to older fans, the likes of whom are likely already well versed in Dillinger's incinerating pyrotechnics.
For everyone else, here's the general equation: take two parts violent hardcore played at levels of algebraic precision, add in liberal amounts of chilly electronica, and then complete the formula with angular, post modern lyricism and confrontational, full-blown catharsis.
Though always a gripping, blood-boiling listen, "Ire Works" is also a fantastic starting point for listeners unfamiliar with the band. This is undoubtedly the catchiest, most accessible record The Dillinger Escape Plan has crafted to date.
One would be hard-pressed to think this after hearing album opener "Fix Your Face." In truly vintage fashion, Dillinger careens through passages of manic blastbeats, stabbing jazz patterns and pit fight violence.
"Lurch," meanwhile, is an even meaner affair. It is a hailstorm of odd time signatures, ferocious beatdowns, and blatant aural trauma from a black cloud of good old-fashioned hardcore chock full of aggression.
As brutal as these two introductory pieces are, it is "Black Bubblegum" which will draw in more casual music fans while offering newer surprises for older fans.
"Bubblegum" boils at a searing simmer, weaving its way through hiccups of grim industrial and a tense undercurrent of metallic heaviness. The whole thing is like Nine Inch Nails getting assaulted by a Mike Patton side-project in a back alley. Heck, I'll be blunt and just call this the second coming of Faith No More's breakthrough single "Epic."
From that point on, the CD is a rave-up through aggressive yet atmospheric electronics and blood-soaked mathcore.
"Sick on Sunday" is a creepy festival of lights reminiscent of a heavy metal Aphex Twin. Out of its dying ashes emerges the tantric skitter of "When Acting as a Particle," which grows from jagged strings into the pummeling "Nong Eye Gong."
This shouldn't come as a surprise to older fans, the likes of whom are likely already well versed in Dillinger's incinerating pyrotechnics.
For everyone else, here's the general equation: take two parts violent hardcore played at levels of algebraic precision, add in liberal amounts of chilly electronica, and then complete the formula with angular, post modern lyricism and confrontational, full-blown catharsis.
Though always a gripping, blood-boiling listen, "Ire Works" is also a fantastic starting point for listeners unfamiliar with the band. This is undoubtedly the catchiest, most accessible record The Dillinger Escape Plan has crafted to date.
One would be hard-pressed to think this after hearing album opener "Fix Your Face." In truly vintage fashion, Dillinger careens through passages of manic blastbeats, stabbing jazz patterns and pit fight violence.
"Lurch," meanwhile, is an even meaner affair. It is a hailstorm of odd time signatures, ferocious beatdowns, and blatant aural trauma from a black cloud of good old-fashioned hardcore chock full of aggression.
As brutal as these two introductory pieces are, it is "Black Bubblegum" which will draw in more casual music fans while offering newer surprises for older fans.
"Bubblegum" boils at a searing simmer, weaving its way through hiccups of grim industrial and a tense undercurrent of metallic heaviness. The whole thing is like Nine Inch Nails getting assaulted by a Mike Patton side-project in a back alley. Heck, I'll be blunt and just call this the second coming of Faith No More's breakthrough single "Epic."
From that point on, the CD is a rave-up through aggressive yet atmospheric electronics and blood-soaked mathcore.
"Sick on Sunday" is a creepy festival of lights reminiscent of a heavy metal Aphex Twin. Out of its dying ashes emerges the tantric skitter of "When Acting as a Particle," which grows from jagged strings into the pummeling "Nong Eye Gong."
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