DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN
Ire Works
(Relapse)

ROSETTA
Wake/Lift
(Translation Loss)

OM
Pilgrimage
(Southern Lord)

SICK PORKY
Ancestral
(Zonda)

RED LIMO
Soulful Attack EP
(Self-Released)

AUTOMATIC 7
At Funeral Speed 

(Mental)

DON'T MESS WITH 
TEXAS
Los Dias de Junio

(Moonlee)

MORE REVIEWS

The latest work from these New Jersey mathematicians finds them for the most part expanding and banking on the most accessible sounds of their eventful preceding release Miss Machine.  The rabid core fanbase of the band had certainly been affected by the easy listening (for Dillinger Escape Plan standards anyway) of such record, it’s clear that those who were disappointed by their expansion in sound, will with Ire Works continue to feel alienated, left out, mistreated, ass-ravaged and might in the process tag this great band as a handful of sellouts with aspirations to MTV2 stardom. But they’d be wise to open up their puny little minds a little bit. Ire Works starts as hard as the band is willing to get these days; “Fix Your Face” and “Lurch” are both hectic, slicing and dicing complicated deals; a somewhat more refined extension to their furious blend of technicality and exhausting energy.  Very reminiscing of “Calculating  Infinity”, albeit with the benefits of a bigger budget, a top notch recording and a downer, it seems to serve as a tricky enticement for that hardcore fanbase who still holds some doubts as to where Dillinger Escape Plan stood these days.  Ire Works is brutal, no doubt about it; but the band’s sound has been streamlined and refined and as a consequence the band has found new avenues to explore. DEP now embraces technology as a partner status instead of a desperate gimmick. The use of programming is recurrent and constant throughout the record. It works, because these guys have taken technology and have used it to boost up their music instead of replacing any other instruments.

So yeah. Despite all the blah blah talk, the hardcore fan who only accepts brutality from his favorites still has plenty to enjoy here (to the opening two tracks we can tag “Nong Eye Gong”, the Candiria-like “When Acting as a Wave”, “82588”, “Party Smasher” and “Horse Hunter” as math metal songs) . Ire Works is fast and metal and hardcore and experimental and heavy and spirited and very dynamic and yes, accessible. But for the most part not radio ready yet.  At least half of the thirteen cuts contained here are thoroughly complicated; highly technical, and in the inside, with a bestial soul. It’s no secret that the Dillinger Escape Plan have had plenty of lineup issues in the past, most recently their drummer had defected to Coheed & Cambria, but where most would suffer, DEP seems to be thriving and breeding through its wounds and scars. Of the most accessible, paced and controlled material we can say that the world has a new Faith No More. Throatman Greg Puciato proves here that he’s no mere barking pitbull, he had hinted at it through the easy listening cuts from Miss Machine, but in Ire Works he transforms himself into a Mike Patton soundalike. Not with all the dumbass fuckery but with the great melodious singer of Angel Dust, which is by far one of the most heralded records among underground circles of the last fifteen years.  That’s a good thing by the way.

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