Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

I love The Dillinger Escape Plan, but I’m not one of those hardcore megafans that worships them and only listens to them, Converge, Glassjaw, The Chariot, and other similar bands (I’m not putting any of those bands down, they’re all fucking great). Although I don’t dislike any of Dillinger’s albums, the only two that I actually listen to on a regular basis are Option Paralysis and the album that I am going to review right now, One of Us is the Killer. I’ve only been listening to these guys for about five or six months, but already, I’ve listened to them enough to where I can say that I know their music fairly well. And after talking to countless people and apologizing to them for not being one of Dillinger’s biggest fans (I’m in Seattle, almost every other metalhead here is a Converge/Dillinger fanatic), The Dillinger Escape Plan release One of Us is the Killer, which amazed me so much that I felt ashamed for anything negative that I might have said about these guys.

A lot of bands right now are cutting their hair and releasing more melodic and less energetic albums due to exhaustion from all the heavy shit they’ve put out. But not these guys, this is The Dillinger Escape Plan at full fucking force. For those of you that aren’t in the USA, these guys just headlined our annual Summer Slaughter Tour, and after watching those live videos of them on YouTube and hearing stories about how crazy the band is live, I wanted to wait until I saw them live for myself before writing this review. Well, I saw them on the 19th and they’re just as crazy as they were back in 1999.

When it comes to really chaotic bands like these, I really tend to crack down on their tightness. Because it’s very easy to have multiple members out of time when playing like this since it’s not like a technical death album where everything HAS to be precise, this is noisy shit. And no matter how hard I look for fuck-ups like that, I can’t find any spot where any of the members fell out of time or fucked up in any sort of way. It’s a fucking miracle! This is what I’ve been looking for! Not only are there no mistakes whatsoever, they go all out into the most dangerous territory where it’s super easy to slip up in some way or another.

The sound production is the best of any Dillinger album ever released. It still sounds noisy as fuck, but nothing drowns everything else out. I’ve always had issues with these sort of really noisy bands having way too much treble, or having the drums be way too overpowering (that’s usually the main issue); but there’s none of that here. And on top of that, it still sounds somewhat raw! As an added bonus, the amount of bass this record has is immense.

I can’t really pick any specific songs to talk about because if I did, I would have to write about all of them and I’m not really a fan of track-by-track reviews unless it’s an EP (I usually do track-by-track reviews with EPs). Every single fucking song on here has its own unique color and its own special experience to put you through. The vocals are perfection. The singing is 100% in tune and the screams are more powerful than any other scream that I’ve ever heard in my life.

If you’re wondering what progressive metal band is at the top of their game right now, The Dillinger Escape Plan is that band. Yes, I know that Animals as Leaders, Mutiny Within, Devin Townsend Project, and Periphery are also at their best right now, but The Dillinger Escape Plan is going completely overboard with what they are doing. This is an album that you NEED to listen to. Everything about it is perfect. This is definitely one of the best albums of 2013 and gets a PERFECT score of 20/20. 

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