A month and a half ago at this time, all seemed well in the Dillinger Escape Plan camp. The band’s highly anticipated follow-up to the awe-inspiring Miss Machine, titled Ire Works, was about to be recorded, and the group was keeping its fanbase regularly updated via a hilarious set of YouTube clips. But, alas, how things can change in a little over a month. Now in an L.A. studio actually committing the record to tape (uh, committing the CD to Protools?) but without one of its founding members/drummer Chris Pennie, Dillinger Escape Plan finds itself staring mortality directly in the eyes.

“The new record has been an interesting circumstance,” begins guitar player Ben Weinman. “Our drummer quit a couple of weeks before we were going to go record and that made things difficult, but I think it’s by far the best Dillinger record ever. I know everybody says that, but I really feel it. I really believe it. For the first time I feel that if someone told me that this was the best Dillinger record I’d definitely agree with them.”
“I think the new record is a little more focused and a little more intentional than Miss Machine,” he continues. “It’s a little more intense. It’s just a super-pissed off record. It’s an angry record. There’s a lot of diversity on it and there’s songs that are a little more melodic like on Miss Machine, but everything is in your face.”

Miss Machine featured intense moments that rivalled and, at times, even outgunned the extremity of 1999’s seminal and genre-defining Calculating Infinity. At the same time, Dillinger’s experimentation and forays into more straight-ahead radio-friendly tracks on Miss Machine brought the band a more diverse palette to create with.

“It was really tough for us because not many bands get pigeonholed after putting out one record but we did. Usually it takes two or three records for someone to be like, ‘Wow, Slayer sounds like Slayer’ (laughs). Because so much attention was put on Calculating Infinity and it had been so long before we had put out another full-length, people just probably expected Calculating Infinity II. But we’re in a good position now because we expanded on Miss Machine. At this point, we can do anything.”

With Dillinger Escape Plan recently celebrating its tenth anniversary as a band, one wonders where the individual members still find the kind of aggression needed to put a group like Dillinger into (crazy/frenzied/flailing) motion.

“We didn’t really publicize our ten year anniversary, but it happened in May,” Weinman explains. “Any time you last that long there’s plenty to draw from. You’ve got personal relationships and dealing with the financial issues of being in a non-commercial, non-marketable and still continuing, band, given the age that we’re at. We’re still trying to find purpose in it all and we’re still trying to have it be real. A big part of the aggression on this record was the problems we were having in the band with our drummer. We were barely able to talk to each other, even when we were just jamming. And somehow I think that affected the writing. While he was staring off in another direction, it made me want to be more true to it more than ever.”

On the subject of Pennie leaving, many were surprised at his departure for emo band Coheed and Cambria. Pennie, as mentioned above, was a founding member of Dillinger Escape Plan and his complex playing was one of Dillinger’s defining features.

“His departure was difficult. We didn’t know if we could continue because his drumming was just a big part of all this. At the same time, what we all had to realize was that drums don’t write songs. That’s the bottom line. Just because we’re a very rhythmic band doesn’t mean that we can’t continue. It doesn’t mean there aren’t good drummers out there. I think that’s the one thing people are going to realize when they hear this record – this is the most drum-heavy record we’ve ever done. It’s insane. The guy we have playing on it, Gil (Sharone, also drummer in Stolen Babies) is just an animal. He has some things that Chris didn’t have, and they’re just different drummers. There’s similarities, too; it still sounds just like a Dillinger record. You could believe for every second that it was Chris on the record. But then there are things that come from a different background that Gil brings to the table, and that’s really awesome. Those things are great to have on a Dillinger record.”

All of this begs the question: is Sharone leaving Stolen Babies for a full-time gig in Dillinger Escape Plan?

“Gil is not leaving Stolen Babies,” Weinman states emphatically. “He’s not leaving one band to join another. He’s just doing double-duty right now.”

Ire Works will be vocalist Greg Puciato’s second full-length with the band. Now that he’s been in Dillinger Escape Plan for more than five years, is it the case that Puciato and the rest of the group feel more at ease with each other in the studio?

“That’s definitely, definitely true,” confirms Weinman. “When we did Miss Machine I was much more heavily involved in his side of things, as far as helping him do things like formulate structure and phrasing over our kind of rhythms and things like that. On this new one, he’s more on his own. That’s for sure. I definitely trust his opinions and trust his taste and things like that much more now than when he first joined the band.”

Puciato has also been very involved in the group’s short in-studio episodes that can be viewed online. Weinman asserts that a connection with the fans is something the band is definitely keen on promoting.

“It’s something we haven’t been good at in the past,” he explains. “We’re one of the few bands that can walk around outside of your own show and no one even recognizes you. And not that that’s important, but we’ve started getting better at connecting with people. Greg is the one who really does most of that video stuff. And first we didn’t really care about videotaping ourselves in the studio or whatever, but now it’s cool to show people that stuff so you have an interaction with fans. It’s cool to have kids write you and say they’re so excited about the band. When we were younger, there was this cool aura around bands. I used to buy band DVDs because you’d get to see bands in the studio and you’d get to see another side of them. It’s something that we started doing and we’ve just gotten more into it and it’s fun. I guess it can also be viewed as a marketing thing, but most of it is just fun for us. It’s just about making an effort. We feel like we want to make an effort again. We don’t want to be lazy. We want to put everything into this and have energy towards this project and that’s part of it. Being productive is part of it. It’s fun being productive in a way that’s not just about tracking the record.”

After a ten-year run and two wildly essential full-lengths (along with four EPs), I ask Weinman what’s still left to accomplish for Dillinger Escape Plan. Dillinger is a band that will surely go into the annals of metal history as a vanguard that shifted metal’s mindset riotously to the left, creating immeasurable influence in its wake.

“In one sense, after going through so much it’s been such a long haul. We’ve had members paralyzed (note: former bassist Adam Doll was left paralyzed from the chest down during a car accident in 1999), we’ve had members quit the band, we’ve had nerve damage in hands. It’s never-ending. I’ve gotten serious injuries and have major back and neck problems. My shoulder was ripped up. When I see kids in bands jumping around or moving around like we do on stage, all I can say is you’re making a mistake (laughs). Don’t do that. Four surgeries later, I can tell you – you don’t have to do that, so don’t (laughs). If I knew at 20 what I know now… (laughs). We toured with Between The Buried And Me and one guy was sitting on a chair on stage playing and he did that for half the tour. I was like, that’s smart. That’s the idea. Just do that from the start and you’ll be OK (laughs). But in this band, with everything that’s happened that I mentioned before, it seems like it’s hard every day to keep going. It gets to the point where – not to get too hippie about it – whatever you get is a blessing. Like, we just went through the thing where our drummer left so close to recording. And we got through that, and getting through it was a blessing. And now we’re going to have a sick record. I just take it day by day.”
“I just feel like this new record is so important,” Weinman concludes. “I don’t even know what to say about it. It might be the start of a whole new world for Dillinger, or it might be the final chapter that really closes the book. It might be a great sign-off. I don’t know. I do know that either way it’s a powerful record.”