After just releasing a new album entitled “Ire Works” The Dillinger Escape Plan has set out on a massive tour in support of the new album, before they played to a packed house in Pittsburgh, PA I got to sit down with Ben Weinman one of the founding members of New Jerseys, The Dillinger Escape Plan. This proved to be one of the finest interviews I have ever done in my opinion, we talked about the tour their new album, as well as their unique sound amongst other things.
JJ Ulizio ~ To get things started, I see you guys have a lot of dates lined up, how’s the tour going so far?
Ben Weinman - So far so good, only a couple of days ago was our first show in over a year and a half. Not only was that nerve racking but we have two new band members and we are playing new material, ya know trying to get the kinks out. But it’s getting better everyday.
~How would you say people are reacting to the new material?
GOOD! We are getting better reviews than we have ever gotten for any record. It always seems like when you do a record people like it later, people are like “oh that’s a classic record” but it takes it like a year or two for that to happen. But this one seems to be getting a really good response so far. We are happy with it, very happy.
~ How would you explain where the versatility in the songwriting comes from? Is it a natural progression of the band or something done on purpose? Obviously on Miss Machine you have songs similar to older Dillinger like “Panasonic Youth” but there is also songs like “Unretrofied” and “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants” which is a totally different direction.
I think most bands and people in bands listen to a lot of different types of music. I would like to think most musicians would be open to a lot of different styles and a lot of different things. But people tend to get stuck into a genre and stuck into a way of doing things, and buy into these expectations that bands have never done that. So we have always tried to do things our own way and have tried to create our own path and not really have any guidelines to what we were doing so I think that maybe we are not that much different than anyone else. We have just made a conscious effort to have more of an open pallet in how we approach doing things. This is only our third record so with “Miss Machine” it was important for us to take those big chances and styles so we would have an opportunity to be creative and I think we did that.e to the shows!!!!
~Obviously you just released a new album “Ire Works”. Where did you go to record it and what was recording it like as opposed to the previous albums?
This was the first time we recorded outside of our home-base area, which is different. This time we did it out in California it was like in the suburbs of California, so it’s not like we were hanging out in Hollywood and partying, we were just working on the record. I think it was cool to take us out of our comfortable environment and to just focus on the record instead of things at home like bills, or girlfriends, or whatever ya know what I mean. It was definitely an interesting way to do it.
~What do you see in the future for the Dillinger Escape Plan?
I really don’t know, I take it day by day at this point. Everyday I’m just happy we are still doing it. There have been so many things and so many obstacles throughout the years it’s hard to believe sometimes that we’re still here. But every day it’s just a constant struggle to stay relevant musically and as a business, making sure we can survive financially and it keeps me pretty busy, so I just try to take it day by day.
~What would you say is some of the music that inspires the sound of the Dillinger Escape Plan? Every band tries to do their best and be original and not sound like anybody else but you are one of the few bands that I have heard that has an original sound, I can honestly say no one sounds like The Dillinger Escape Plan.
Well thanks man! I would probably say…. I don’t know it’s hard, I grew up with my parents listening to show tunes. So there wasn’t like the Rolling Stones or anything Rock and Roll happening. But at the same time listening to music like scores and show tunes and things like that, a lot of that stuff is very complicated and very dense and the music really mimics the mood of what is going on. So I would say that the Dillinger Escape Plan is a soundtrack to our lives, it really is. That’s one of the reasons it is diverse, the music itself because it really is just the soundtrack to what is going on in our heads. Sometimes music that we hate is just as much of an influence on us as music that we like. We hear all the music that is out there and its just not satisfying and we wanna create that CD we want to hear, and we have the tools to do it so lets just do it, ya know?
~Would you say that the things like the show tunes is where a lot of the jazz elements came from?
Yeah absolutely, a lot of that stuff is very schizophrenic and you can definitely hear that in our music. But I don’t know, I have always been attracted to dissidents a lot too, I don’t know why but I think I got desensitized so early on for typical heavy music so I'm always trying to think of ways to push it in different directions so I think every thing that I have listened to and that the band has listened to throughout the years has in someway impacted the music that we write whether we hated it or not, a band like Creed has probably influenced the Dillinger Escape Plan as much as any other band. I was like “wow this is not…cool” ya know? Hahaha. I’m not big into this very much and I want to go write a song and vent.
~I’ll admit I liked Creed for about 15 minutes, and what always pissed me off about them was that Mark Tremonti is an amazing guitar player and I always thought that his talents were wasted in that band, and Altar Bridge was just Creed II
Yeah man he is a sick guitar player and a lot of people don’t realize that. But a lot of different music like of fusion like King Crimson, a lot of different things from the 60’s and 70’a that were taking people out into different directions but a lot of heavy music growing up too. A lot of Earache stuff like Carcass, Sepultura, Death, whatever and a lot of underground hardcore and post hardcore stuff. Coming from New Jersey where the hardcore scene was thriving that was kind of the scene we came out of we were into Biohazard and then you had Bad Brains coming out of D.C. There was a lot of hardcore stuff coming out of New York City like Agonistic Front, there is a lot of influence there.
~And here is a question I've been excited to ask you about.
What was it like working with Mike Patton?
It was really cool, we actually had the opportunity to meet him when we opened up for Mr. Bungle years before we actually ended up working with him so by the time we worked with him artistically we already had known him well enough where it wasn’t that uncomfortable and we had a working relationship with each other and it was interesting to be able to sit there and talk about what I pictured him doing and to just go over ideas, he is very open to suggestion. He was a blast he was a joy to work with.
~If we went out to the bus right now and looked at your CD player or iPod or whatever, what would be in there?
Probably Fiona Apple or something, ha-ha. I have the new Radiohead I listen too quite a bit, I love Fiona Apple a lot, a lot of stuff that’s not very heavy, I kinda get my fix out here on tour.
~Unfortunately tonight is the first time I will have seen you live, but I’ve checked out many live videos from YouTube, where does that intensity of your stage presence come from, is it just the music that fuels you or something else?
Its almost an association that I have after doing this for ten years but for me it might be something different than some of the other guys, some of them joined the band as fans almost ya know? For me it’s just that I have been doing it for so long it’s just a part of playing just like needing guitar strings on your guitar. It just goes together, for a band like us the day we can’t do it is the day we wont play, people where telling me “you broke your foot why didn’t you tour and just sit in a chair?” and to me that’s like playing drums without a snare drum for us it just goes hand in hand and for the other guys, like every time we get a new member in the band and some people say member changes make the band weaker, because of the initial intent of the music and what you have behind it but for us it makes us stronger, because we have a bunch of guys who are filling the shows of guys that they looked up to and we are a band that has stories like you saw on YouTube and things but the stories and the ideas of what we are is just as important as music and what we actually are and these people they feel they have a duty to fulfill the 16 year old self that came to see Dillinger years ago and saw something that they never saw before and that keeps it alive I think. I just keeps getting more intense, and more and more intense, and more and more and more intense as the years go on. Instead of a photocopy that gets weaker as you keep copying it, it just gets more detailed and more extreme.
~Any parting comments before we go?
Just thanks and check out our new record, we are really proud of it and come to the shows!!!!
