Dillinger Escape Plan – “Dissociation”
Album Reviews | Oct 17th, 2016
Label: Party Smasher Inc.
Genre: Technical metal
Bank Link: http://www.dillingerescapeplan.org/
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In what could potentially be the band’s last studio, the band continues its evolution in abstract song structures with Dissociation. While the band has seen many members come and go, this core of Ben, Greg, Bill and Liam has been constantly redefining what the band is, and this release is as far from what any would expect of them.
It’s been a long journey for the band. My first introduction to them was a then recently released ‘Calculating Infinity’, an album that blew the doors open to the world for them via a spastic experimental sound that defied regular strong structures and other trends the scene had fallen prey too. Although a very landmark album, it wasn’t until they added Greg Puciato on vocals that the band began to experiment a bit after creating a collaboration EP with Mike Patton. The one thing we learned over time with the band’s chaotic nature was to expect swerves at all times, whether it be in your face odd time signatures, electronically laced songs, or the occasionally rock flavored tune.
This album is the culmination of everything they’ve ever done. However it seems as if the band has grown more to be attentive to pacing, as the days of those short bursts of 2 and half minute long songs have given way to showcasing more of the musiciany side of the band. While the spastic bursts are present, they’ve married them into more of their own styled of structure, when technical parts come in like in “Limerent Death,” it further cements that you can never expect them to follow any formula.
The closest thing to the more rock orientated tracks they’ve done on the last few albums would be “Nothing to Forget” and “Symptom of Terminal Illness.” Although I will note what they did a good job of was sparsely adding these moments throughout the entire albums. As far as guitar and drum work, this is Dillinger at it’s best, just when I thought I had heard it all, they managed to make most of today’s Tech/Djent bands look like they aren’t even trying. The weird thing is it’s refreshing to hear this parts that normally would seem randomly thrown in elsewhere work here.
The album closes with the title track and it’s slow pace and fade out plays as a swan song to what would be the perfect bookend to an extremely interesting band discography. I’ve heard the band did write a lot more than what appeared on the album, but it remains to be seen if any of that will see the light of day after the tour supporting this album.
Bottom Line: The band made music on their own terms and has been describing this album as going out on top, and that’s the best representation of what this is. This is an album you’ll be digging into for quite some time. It stinks this is the end for them.
Notable tracks: Surrogate, Manufacturing Consent, Limerent Death , Symptom of Terminal Illness
Overall Rating:
