The Dillinger Escape Plan

Onlangs stond The Dillinger Escape Plan samen met Cancer Bats en The Ocean in de Amsterdamse Melkweg, dit om de nieuwe plaat, Option Paralysis, te promoten. Deze plaat doet het nog steeds erg goed op onze redactie, de band klinkt gelikter dan ooit tevoren. Doordat de sound ietwat anders is, spookten allerlei vragen door onze hoofden. Omdat de beste antwoorden in dit geval van de band zou moeten komen, knoopten we een gesprek aan met bandleden Liam Wilson en Jeff Tuttle.

“I’m Jeff and I play guitar in The Dillinger Escape Plan.” “And I’m Liam, I play bass. In The Dillinger Escape Plan.” We zitten in de kleedkamer van de Melkweg, aan de vooravond van de tweede show dan deze Europese tour. Gister speelde de band in Parijs, hoe was dit? Liam: “Great first show! With all first shows, there come some first drafts, but this was a good show. Europe is always great for us, we look forward to it. In the States, every city has it’s own flavour, but it’s more homogenised. When we come here, well there are some much countries.” Jeff: “It’s different, because in Europe, there are so much different cultures.” Liam: “Yeah, but we don’t come here that often, so that plays a role as well.”

“But we don’t change our setlist if we get to a different country. Or we don’t think ‘Ah, we’re going to Europe, let’s play more progressive songs’. But we like Amsterdam, we played some crazy shows here. Like in the small room, shit was going off! Like stagediving from the balcony, we’re like ‘okayyyy’. I don’t know what they’re smoking.” Jeff: “Today we arrived at noon and we pulled into, what I later found was an airportparking, at seven in the morning. And we stayed there for a few hours, so I’m a bit jetlagged…” Liam: “But when I went into the city, I bought wooden shoe magnets for my family.”

De band bracht dit jaar Option Paralysis uit, een goed ontvangen album die volgens uw schrijver volwassener klinkt in vergelijking met voorganger Ire Works. Is de band het hier mee eens? Liam: “Offcourse. We don’t get into the studio and say ‘let’s not even top our last album, because that’s the best we could do. Let’s try making something that’s the same.’ But when I listen to Ire Works, no that we have Option Paralysis, I think Ire Works is a little bit undercooked. The only reasons are just a matter of circumstances. Like our drummer quitting half-way through our writing process. We met our new drummer three days before we went recording and expect him to throwdown. Wich he did, but the overall morale of the band was al over the place. Any other band would have quit.”

“It was all killer no filler this time. Ten full songs, no interludes, no weird tracks, no skippers. If you skip a track, that’s because you don’t like it, not because the song is undercooked. And our producer was like, when we did something that sounded like something from Ire Works; ‘You already did that, we know you can do that, but you can do better!’” Jeff: “For example, Mouth of Ghosts, being the first song in wich we used a piano.” Liam: “When we wrote the song it had a pianopart.” Jeff: “But maybe at that time we weren’t feeling for a pianosong. Maybe Greg wasn’t ready for a song like that. With widower, we all were.” Liam: “We wouldn’t been able to do Option Paralysis without going through what we went through, at that time as a band.”

Als we Option Paralysis gaan vergelijken met Miss Machine, dan is eerstgenoemde minder chaotisch. Is de band het eens met deze simpele lezing? Liam: “Yeah, but then again… Miss Machine was coming of Calculating Infinity, wich was coming of Irony Is A Deadscene. At that point, A: maybe we had a little bit more anger, and B: we felt that our fans had some more anger, so we needed something to proscribe them for their angst. Since we got a bit older, our fans got a bit older and we also feel like we don’t have to proof it anymore. With Miss Machine we wrote those techy parts because we thought that kids wanted that. After that we realised that we’re writing this shit for ourselves. Overall Miss Machine is more brutal, but Option Paralysis has some very technical parts.” Jeff: “I think the chaos is definitely there and it’s taken to a higher level. I think it’s more interesting and way more of a challenge for a band to transpose that attitude into something that’s a bit more accessible. We’re doing Dillinger things, but we’re sneaking it under the radar and into the mainstream.”

Liam: “We started to think that there was more. It’s not only about the music. This time around, we pushed the marketing a bit. Anyone can download a record, but coming to a show and buying a t-shirt or other merch becomes it. I was thinking about the marketing, or like the packaging of Option Paralysis. With Ire Works we didn’t had a boxset. This time we had a crazy vinyl. And we wanted a boxset that was related to that vinyl in this way, but isn’t repeating. We didn’t want the boxset in a vinyl-package.”

De band heeft regelmatig in een andere besetting gespeelt, het is zelfs nog nooit voorgekomen dat de band twee albums met dezelfde line-up heeft uitgebracht. Liam denkt dat de band nu stabieler dan ooit te voren is en verwacht ook dat de volgende plaat de eerste gaat zijn die is gemaakt met dezelfde line-up als de plaat ervoor.

In 2002 werkte de band samen met niemand minder dan Mike Patton en destijds was Liam net in The Dillinger Escape Plan. Het eerste waar z’n naam op kwam was gelijk een EP met een van z’n helden. In het begin was hij heel erg nerveus, want hij wist niet hoe hij Mike moest aanspreken, maar dat kwam vanzelf. En de samenwerking was echt heel fijn, zo zat Mike soms nog tot drie uur in de studio op vanalles uit te proberen. De band heeft nog steeds contact met hem en belt hem geregeld voor wat advies.

Een van de leden die destijds in de band zat, was Chris Pennie. Nu is het echter een bandlid van Coheed & Cambria. Waarom stapte Chris uit de band? Liam: “I don’t know, you should interview Chris. Maybe he thought that he had better options somewhere else. It was a shock and a kick in the balls to all of us but in the end, maybe it was better.” De band staat bekend om z’n liveperformance, doet de band nog iets speciaals voordat ze het podium betreden? Liam: “I do some yoga, but nothing more.” Tourmanager Jessica Curreri wil dat we het interview afbreken en daarom mag ik nog maar een vraag stellen. Dan sluit ik maar voortijdig af met de schoenmaatvraag. Liam: “Ten and a half, US!” Jeff: “I’m a ten. But my penis is not, if that’s what you getting at. My penis is way bigger.”