Down with Dillinger: One Night of Escape

Jamie Borthwick battles through carnage, chaos and a crate of Irn Bru, all par for the course during an evening spent in the company of math metal monoliths Dillinger Escape Plan

Feature by Jamie Borthwick | 13 Jun 2008

It’s another baltic night in Glasgow; standing in the cold, the sleek veil of drizzle slowly seeps through The Skinny's beanie while droplets form and fall from our nose as we stand outside the heavy wrought-iron adorned doors of The Cathouse. We've already buzzed up twice when the entrance finally swings to. A short but imposing character, face masked by a hooded sweater, darts straight past and over to a waiting taxi. Producing a scrunched note of directions to the cabbie, the man pulls back the hood and is recognisable as Greg Puciato: a man quite possibly in possession of the most ferocious set of lungs in the realm of hardcore.

The unpredictable climate may be imposing, but math-metal behemoths Dillinger Escape Plan are sicker, darker and more destructive than any Jamaica Street typhoon. Up the staircase into The Catty’s seedy innards, Chris, DEP’s tour manager, makes his introductions. Chris marries the girth of Puciato with an extra foot or two of height and would dominate the main hall of the Carling Academy, let alone the shadowy gothic close leading to the main bar here. His introductions are clipped but sincere: “If you just want to hang out with the band then make yourself at home man. They’re soundchecking just now but come on up.”

The floor in front of the stage is a disaster zone: dismembered parts of drum kit glisten like shards of glass among a riot of hard travel cases, amp heads, cabinets and bored-looking blokes. Beyond the barrier Jeff Tuttle, Ben Weinman, Liam Wilson, and Gil Sharone are leisurely getting the gear together. For around an hour they painstakingly test each instrument, channel, effect and light.

This doesn’t feel like the calm before the storm. It’s workmanlike, clinical. Are these the same guys that induce terror and exhilaration in equal amounts with their guitar-hurling, feces-chucking, get-you-arrested performances almost each and every night?

Perched at the side, The Skinny sums up the evidence and concludes that nothing on show as yet could point towards this. Bored, the band members swap instruments and, with Weinman striking up a simplistic four-four drum beat, they labour through a run of Milk Lizard. It has been two months on the road for Dillinger up to this point – but their expressions show every minute of the 10 years they’ve been on the scene. After struggling with a forest of leads and wires, Chris has sorted the band’s on-stage lighting rig and they test it through a spine-tingling sample of Sunshine the Werewolf.

If this couldn’t raise so much as a hair on the necks of the band then had these guys still got the energy to kick it off on stage? Sonically satisfied, they retire backstage, as does The Skinny’s curiosity.

“Hey man, it’s great to meet you. We’re just talking about cocks.” Any prior conceptions about meeting Puciato are shown the window as soon as the backstage room is entered. It’s an unpretentious, borderline meagre area, furnished with one sofa, a chair and small table, a knee-height fridge and not much standing room. The walls are splattered with promo stickers and tags from bands who have previously inhabited the musty space - everybody from Pearl Jam to Pitchshifter - and Puciato is crouched on one end of the sofa with Weinman and Tuttle next to him.

“I guess homoerotic chat is pretty inevitable on a tour with what, about 12 guys and one girl [being Stolen Babies singer Dominique Persi], I don’t know how long this can go on,” says Greg.

Chris comes in and embraces the theme heartily. “It summed it all up last night in Manchester. There was about six of us walking down the road and this girl goes past – probably with her boyfriend for all we know. Anyway, all of us just stop and surround this girl, it must have been quite daunting, man, this circle of guys who haven’t seen many girls in weeks.”

The guys are relaxed and talkative even with a scribbler and two photographers present in what is usually their own private sanctum. There is a spread of mainly vegetarian food packed on to the table and one packet is in particular demand. The large pack of fresh spinach is demolished in minutes as they grab handfuls and eat it like popcorn.

“You can’t beat this stuff,” Greg says between mouthfuls, but he is about to be blindsided by a very Scottish product.

“Pass me one of those crazy orange sodas," he shouts to our photographer who stands next to a stockpile of Irn Bru. The impression is immediate. “They put something in this, I’m telling you.” Puciato is wide eyed, joyous, electrified and a little bit possessive of the nectar. “I can’t put this down, I’m too scared you’ll drink it and I want all of it. I swear, there’s some opiate in here that makes you keep drinking.”

Assuring the Bru-convert that there’s nothing more underhanded than a healthy dose of Scottish steel girders in his fizz, Puciato is certainly unmoved to hear that it outsells Coke on these cholesterol loving shores. “That figures, the guys who make this have something special going on,” he says, recovering slightly from his sugar hit but still guarding his can with one of his tree-branch forearms.

The demeanor of the band backstage has allayed The Skinny’s fears that there may be some lack of motivation in camp Dillinger. The impression they give is that of laid-back, normal guys enjoying the ups and downs of being caught inside the touring machine. Puciato is naturally witty and chats away on any given subject as though he'd already known you all his life. Jeff, the relative new boy seems to stick to the more established faces for guidance, with the experience being fairly new to him.

“This is my first tour in Europe and I’m really loving it. Since I joined the band it’s just been a real ride and doing things for the first time is all part of it. I cannot wait to get out on stage.” Tuttle takes a call from a DEP-mad friend of the photographer, and is shocked to hear he couldn’t get a ticket for the show. “Can we get him on the door?” he asks but there seems little chance. Tickets for the Cathouse gig had vendors putting up the ‘Sold Out’ signs within hours of going on sale.

All around, the signs of how big this particular night will be for Scotland’s metal fraternity are evident. A posse of five boys find their way in and wander through the soundcheck forest like kids in a toy shop after-hours. Discovered by security, they're promptly escorted back outside – for their sake The Skinny hopes it wasn’t to the back of the already formidable queue. Over at the merchandise table, another ticketless fan hits the jackpot. Turning up early, seeking a ticket on the street, he had been recruited to help lug the boxes of hoodies and t-shirts up the stairs and earned his way into the gig by the back door. And, as organisers take a deluge of phone requests for guest-list places, the draw of Dillinger Escape Plan is plain to see, and staff had to turn away many-a-punter trying to chance his arm at the door.

There remains a scepticism among sections of Dillinger’s fanbase that see the band’s revolving-door line-up as diluting their sound and stage presence. The recent Ire Works (review here) has split opinion as DEP developed further a softer sound, beside the traditional math rip-snorters that had made their name. Losing a drummer of the calibre of Chris Pennie would challenge any band, but the influence his off-kilter, schizophrenic percussion had on Dillinger was huge, and Gil Sharone has had a job on his own skilled hands to fill those boots. But, most of all, the fans had to know the fire was still there. Determined to find it ourselves, The Skinny slips away from the support acts to witness the band in the build-up to their curtain-call.

“Give us a minute guys, just wait out here,” the hulking tour manager tells us as we arrive backstage again. In a tiny box of a hallway, between a shower cubicle and a toilet, we stand listening to the psyche-up session in Dillinger’s dressing room: “They want you out there Greg Puciato. You’re going out there. Gil Sharone. Gil Sharone! I need to know you are ready. Ready Gil!?”

Chris roll calls his way through each of the musicians, shouting out their full-names and pushing them for a reaction; firmly shoving the door shut whenever it blows open. Every so often we snatch a glance inside, catching only the whites of pumped-up eyes before a gargantuan arm swings our view shut again.

At five-to-nine, the door swings and Puciato emerges with Chris at his shoulders. His weaving progress to the stage is like the entrance of a prize-fighter with the mass of the tour manager shielding him from the grasping crowd.

They kick off the set with Panasonic Youth, and one spark blows the house. (You can find a full review of the gig here.)

Dillinger Escape Plan - Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants

Promised some more band time and a photoshoot after the show, we wait in the bar while the fall-out is cleared from the stage area and the band dusts themselves down. As the sweat of the pit sticks to the shirt on the Skinny's t-shirt, we wait. And wait. The band’s oblutions well and truly caused, we finally make our way back into the sanctum to find all is calm and relaxed once more. Sharone and Wilson are visibly delighted with the performance and Puciato has, by this point, morphed from the stage-diving, rigging-climbing dervish back to his ebullient self.

Choosing the stairs out behind the Cathouse for a shoot, we head out into the cold above the smokers’ cage. The Skinny takes the chance to grab a word with Weinman, whose haymaking downstrokes and electrified playing style had been mesmerising during the set. “It was cool to see the kids into the less heavy songs tonight," he offers. "It’s such a nice dynamic for us to be able to go back and forth between stuff that’s not as technical – that dynamic makes it much more fun for us.”

By this point, with the memory of the pulverising show and Weinman’s incredible walk across the heads of the crowd to the back of the room at the end still deliciously fresh in the memory, some of The Skinny’s praise probably goes beyond practical journalistic impartiality. The fan beats the hack for just a minute when I ask: “What song did it for you out there tonight Ben?” I hope his opinion might match my highlight of 43% Burnt when he ponders the question and stares out across the rooftops. “Probably something I was playing on the stereo before we went on. I’m pretty sick of this shit.”

There’s a split in the outlook of Dillinger Escape Plan that The Skinny can’t quite reconcile. These five, amiable, musicians who enjoy playing technical, heavy as sin hardcore metal - a gang with a reputation for being nutters who will throw everything plus the kitchen sink at an audience to reinforce the message of their music – this is sonic violence.

The DEP sound continues to mature, regardless, and Weinman’s statement about the fans enjoying the less heavy songs is a window into where the band perhaps see themselves going. Whether they can keep throwing it down on stage will be the key to Dillinger continuing to put on sold-out gigs like these, but maybe they’ll need to keep that fearsome energy in mind as they come to record their next LP. Weinman’s hammer-blow response to a moment of fandom perhaps unmasks them as not-so-willing metal mentalists after all.

Dillinger Escape Plan play Download Festival, Castle Donnington on 13 Jun and are currently touring Europe

http://www.myspace.com/dillingerescapeplan