The Dillinger Escape Plan - Operation Paralysis (4/5)

01. Farewell, Mona Lisa 05:23 02. Good Neighbor 02:30 03. Gold Teeth on a Bum 05:22 04. Crystal Morning 02:02 05. Endless Endings 02:32 06. Widower 06:23 07. Room Full of Eyes 04:15 08. Chinese Whispers 04:06 09. I Wouldn’t If You Didn’t 04:14 10. Parasitic Twins 04:39

Ah, Dillinger Escape Plan. Even the mere name of the New Jersey mathcore nutcases can inspire fear and awe. ‘Operation Paralysis’, the band’s fourth full-length album, confirms but one thing we had always suspected; if there’s one thing you can expect from Dillinger, it’s the unexpected.

I mean, there are the familiar Dillinger hallmarks in there; the baffling key signatures and utterly insane levels of technicality, the frankly intimidating breakneck thrash-attacks. But ‘Operation Paralysis’ sees Dillinger run much further with the melodic side of their music. Even in opener “Farewell, Mona Lisa”, after a couple of minutes of frankly mad musical terror, Greg Puciato is crooning something halfway comprehensible over a clean, picked guitar line. There’s a clean chorus weaving a lyrical stream through the madness, even when it returns with a vengeance.

In general, the songs are a lot longer than on previous album ‘Ire Works’, as Dillinger look to cram even more into each track. Indeed, if you’re at all familiar with ‘Ire Works’, you’ll know that what I’m describing isn’t entirely a new thing; the style on ‘Operation Paralysis’ is a direct development of songs like “Black Bubblegum” and “Milk Lizard”. The more electronic elements from that album have for the most part dissipated, though, perhaps in a sign of the band taking a more concerted approach rather than trying to be all bizarre things to all half-crazed men.

As far as standout tracks go, “Widower” in particular is a stunning achievement: a piano ballad huddling around a typically Dillinger thrash-down halfway through the song. Avant-garde jazz pianist Mike Garson (probably most famous for his work with David Bowie and later the Smashing Pumpkins) contributes a frankly beautiful piano part, over which Greg Puciato puts in perhaps his finest vocal effort to date.

“Widower” highlights Puciato in the incredible form he’s on throughout the album; there are shades of Mike Patton (Irony is indeed a Dead Scene) in the way he can leap from a croon that Dean Martin wouldn’t be ashamed of to a guttural roar. The whole band can turn on a sixpence like that, flitting between disparate styles with ease, capable of both insane high-speed technical feats and hellish intensity. “Widower” is in a way a microcosm of the album; it features both sides of the game that Dillinger play so well on ‘Operation Paralysis’, and shows how comfortably they can coexist. Said coexistence is a daunting thing in itself, if you’re unused to the strange frontier of music that Dillinger dwell upon; it seems a bit like a crazed homicidal axe murderer moving in with that nice girl who works in the library, and the two of them having a perfectly normal relationship. Everything in accepted theory suggests that it just shouldn’t work, and yet…

“I Wouldn’t If You Didn’t”, the other track which Garson features on, is another example of this, and perhaps an even better one; it’s a seamless marriage of the crazed Dillinger we all know and love, and a gentler and more thoughtful, yet in a way even more complex beast. The juxtaposition between chaos and beauty is even more stark on than on “Widower”, and both songs are testament to how far Dillinger have come as a band.

Looking through the rest of the album, “Room Full of Eyes” is a more old-school Dillinger number, all perplexing time signatures and terrifying drumming at something akin to Mach two; that is, until it changes up halfway through, and proceeds in a slower but perhaps even heavier manner. “Good Neighbor”, “Crystal Morning” and “Endless Endings” are of a similar bent; if we were talking about any other band, you might be tempted to refer to them as being relatively straightforward, but of course Dillinger don’t do straightforward.

Technically Dillinger don’t go anywhere entirely new, by their standards, with this album; some have read into this even through the title being ’Operation Paralysis’. However I’d contest that Dillinger’s standards are way, way fucking out there to start with, to the extent that you’d have to be as barmy as they are to call it unoriginal. Yes, ’Operation…’ is like past Dillinger material, but more so, taken a few steps further - it’s a progression, of sorts, and you really couldn’t accuse them of stagnating. I’ll go further than that, even; I know this isn’t the most accessible music in the world, but frankly this is the kind of form that deserves to catapult a band to a higher level.

Operation Paralysis is available to buy or download at Play.com

Genre : Progressive Metal

Article by Phil Sim