For those of you who have never seen math-metal-mayhem outfit “The Dillinger Escape Plan” play live, then you haven’t lived.  The quintet is crazy–sick crazy.  Their show includes on-stage acrobatics such as flying from 10 foot amplifier stacks to swinging guitars inches from the face of rabid fans.  The band is brutal and spastic, yet musical enough to pull off an amazing cover of Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” (compare this to Throwdown attempting a cover of Alice in Chains’ “Them Bones” earlier in the show, which was far from a success).  If you haven’t gotten my jist yet, you should check them out.

The show that I witnessed took place in New York City’s Irving Plaza music venue.  The venue itself is fairly small with woodfloors and a balcony above.  The venue allows fans to get rignt up to the stage and almost has the feel of a teen center or community events center (only with a bar in the back).  The first band I saw was Bury Your Dead–this will be the last time I see Bury Your Dead.  Their entire reportoire is breakdowns–that appears to be all they can play.  The music is boring and the vocals sound forced–the screamers voice broke a few times during the set and when their bass player attempting to sing I had to cover my ears. It was putrid. 

The following band was Throwdown, a fairly well respected outfit that has really bridged the gap between hardcore and metal.  Once almost exclusively in the hardcore community, Throwdown’s newer material sounds like Pantera part II, only ya know, without a guitar player close to the talent of Dimebag.  Throwdown put on an ok show overall, but nothing really stood out to me.  They also decided to play an Alice in Chains cover song without, ya know, singing.  While vocalist David Peters attempted to scream in pitch to what should have been harmonized vocals, he failed, and seemed to give up halfway through, instead resorting to his more comfortable hardcore growls.  While it wasn’t a disaster, the cover was far from impressive, and that was a microcosm of the band’s entire set.

The Dillinger Escape Plan, not surprisingly, was the saving grace of the show.  The band played everything from old favorites From Calculating Infinity to new-school tracks from Ire Works.  The band even managed to make fun of Warped Tour kids and pay tribute to a band that heavily influenced…well lots of people (Van Halen).   Much to the enjoyment of the band, the crowd latched on to the cover and seemed to ACTUALLY KNOW THE SONG, unlike the DEP’s experience in front of the Warped Tour kids. 

Essentially, the band’s live performance is about an hour of spasming, screaming, guitar waiving, amplifier jumping, mayhem.   The vocals are almost perfect to the album and despite the band’s constant movement, the music too is near flawless, despite the insaine complexity of the riffing.  It’s not called mathcore for nothing folks, these songs are very complex and played in difficult time signatures.  This band is clearly one for the ages–at least in the underground.  Its unfortunate that a band with this immesnse talent will never be respected by the mainstream due to the style in which they play. If you are an open-minded person, give em a shot, you won’t regret it.

Photo courtesy of shoutweb.com