As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
The Dillinger Escape Plan with Closure in Moscow
The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
19th October 2017
If you expect your punk bands to exist in perpetuity, you’ve missed the point. Thank Christ bands like the Dillinger Escape Plan have the artistic integrity to call it quits.
Dillinger became as important as they are because of their dangerous, violent live show. And—cards on the table here—for the last several albums cycles…they haven’t been.
Have they still been great shows? Absolutely. But you used to be ducking mic stands and broken guitars, or worrying if the hulking man beast dangling from the venue’s lighting rig was going to jump on you, while watching an unfathomably tight outfit blast through insanely technical math metal. Some of the Dillinger dudes are approaching middle age now, there’s no way they could sustain that madness.
A deep ambivalence about all of this engulfs me as I head to the Corner Hotel. I feel like it’s a good thing for Dillinger to take their final bow, but it’s really fucking sad to know a band that I have matured with, that has helped me navigate the frustrations of adolescence, as well as adulthood, is leaving me to deal with that shit by myself from now on.
The Dillinger Escape Plan // By Bree Wallace
The sold out room shares my confusion, is tonight a celebration or a commiseration? People are still trying to figure it out when Closure in Moscow appear. While the front of the room is busy, it’s mostly just people jockeying for their preferred positions for the headliners. CIM are an excellent choice for the bill, and the zany psychedelia of their Pink Lemonade album is still compelling three years on from its release, but we’re all a bit preoccupied with our feelings to give too many shits.
Some people might argue if Dillinger really wanted to go out on top, they would have imploded after Ire Works. That was their truly zeitgeist shifting record, and the one where the band was young enough to go batshit feral live.
These songs have soundtracked a significant portion of our lives now, and to be able to hear them for one more time feels like an absolute privilege.
And it’s true, Ire Works was a high watermark for the band, the record pissed off everyone (save the tiny group of Irony is a Dead Scene tragics) when it dropped, but those earworm choruses made dissidents announce themselves for the chumps they were. The Ire Works tours, also, were the last where crowds shared in a transcendence through immediate physical danger.
But if Dillinger told the world to fuck off after Ire Works, this article probably would be celebrating a reunion of a great band rather than commemorating the career of a once-in-a-generation musical phenomenon. After Ire Works, Dillinger still pushed themselves creatively, and reached new peaks. After Option Paralysis the writing was on the wall—history would view Dillinger more favourably if they burned out, rather than just faded away into an oblivious parody of their younger selves.
Tonight, Dillinger just wanna burn. Maybe not like they used to. They want to burn like the shows where Greg Puciato would show off his impressive fire-breathing abilities and ruin his body for the amusement of a small audience. They want to burn like dudes who have spent 20 years crafting one of the most nuanced, idiosyncratic catalogues in modern alternative music.
The Dillinger escape Plan // By Bree Wallace
That gives them more than enough fodder to put on a fucking incredible greatest hits tour. What they lack in piss and vinegar, the atmosphere in the room negates. As they bust through Limerent Death, When I Lost My Bet, Milk Lizard and Panasonic Youth the crowd’s enthusiasm is propulsive. Even with the looming reminder of how fleeting this moment is; Greg cloaked in a hoodie like he’s Ingmar Bergman’s interpretation of death really drives the point home. The room heaves with jubilation. These songs have soundtracked a significant portion of our lives now, and to be able to hear them for one more time feels like an absolute privilege.
With such a formidable catalogue in their back pocket, Dillinger’s set feels like a chance for a generation of fans to say goodbye to their favourite album; whether that’s the skronk of Calculating Infinity, the tribute to Amphetamine Reptile that was One of Us is the Killer or the futuristic goth darkwave of Dissociation, every Dillinger moment gets a look in. There are gaps in the setlist – Sunshine the Werewolf doesn’t get a run – but that doesn’t really matter that much. It’s not about what Dillinger are playing tonight, just that they’re coming through to say goodbye.
The Dillinger Escape Plan // By Bree Wallace
There are certain characters in music who are compelling because they represent the ideal of the superhuman. For Lemmy to play as loud as he did, for as long as he did, he appeared to be an otherwordly being. For Snoop Dogg to punish blunts for 30 years and still have the lung capacity to hit a flow seems like a perfect distortion of the Nietzschean ideal. The Dillinger Escape Plan were never these superheroes, they were simply a very determined band who happened to have a very fucking good guitar player. And as good as their set is tonight, it’s apparent their resolve has waned.
But, in an increasingly careerist music scene, the decision to acknowledge their mortality feels like Dillinger’s final masterstroke. There’s enough content out there that we don’t need another band that makes us say ‘they were way better two decades ago’. We should celebrate the fact the Dillinger Escape Plan sustained the level of chaos they did for as long as they did, and then made a decision to go out with such integrity.
John Farnham should take note.
Catch The Dillinger Escape Plan with special guests Closure In Moscow at the following remaining dates.
Limited tickets available here.
Friday October 20, Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC (18+) SOLD OUT
Saturday October 21, Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW (18+) SOLD OUT
Sunday October 22, Max Watts, Brisbane QLD (18+)
