The Dillinger Escape Plan is perhaps as well-known for their live performances - which are, at least in Philly, an enthralled, collective hyper-mania by which you immediately and unknowingly find yourself utterly transfixed - as they are their unique mix of schizophrenic math-metal and melodramatic pop-rock. Full disclosure: I'm a long-term fan of DEP and do not plan to hide my incessant fawning and infatuation with their music (and style - something perhaps as equally important to DEP). Without being too impetuous, I think I'm prepared to justify the assertion that DEP's newest release One of Us Is the Killer is their best recording, represents a relieving culmination of various moves in their recent musical history, and perhaps sends Dillinger off into uncharted waters going forward. What makes the record so good is subtle and took me a few diligent listens to fully appreciate. If you're like me and are usually too impatient for most of anything, allow me to help you along. I'll probably fail. It's OK, fuck you.
The most striking difference between this record and the rest of the post-Miss Machine catalog (which I tend to regard as a musical unit) is the new, almost pervasive sense of theatricality. This record is the opera of hardcore. Almost every song - perhaps excluding "Prancer", which feels like it was written for Option Paralysis - includes at least a hook, a riff, or a vocal styling that makes you feel like you're visiting the aural equivalent of a circus. The spoken vocal section in "When I Lost My Bet". The post-chorus ambiance of "One of Us Is the Killer". The 5-second, sing-song-like breaks you hear between chaotic sections of chunks in "Hero of the Soviet Union". The guitar noise in "Understanding Decay" that sounds like a borderline trumpet. Pretty much all of "The Threat Posed...". While this isn't exactly a new sonic idiom for Dillinger - you can hear hints of this sense of theater throughout their catalog - but it has never featured as such an integral element of an entire record as it does on OOUITK. Overall, the album leverages a bit more of their pop-rock tendencies, even within songs for which you immediately expect, judging from the opening riff, a single stream of unintelligible mathy-ness. This see-saw aesthetic of the record - the more nimble shifts from otherworldly polyrhythms to their rock and roll, Nine Inch Nails-like persona - makes you feel a delightful bit of vertigo once you catch on. Unlike Option Paralysis in particular, OOUITK is their most unified musical adventure - Ire Works perhaps a close second - and the glue here is this overwhelming freshness their more capricious songwriting gives to the whole piece. It's relative shortness, at ~40 minutes, with songs practically all approximately equal in length, makes it easily digestible in one sitting and gives the impression, emphasized acutely by the last four songs as an obvious "final movement", that you're listening to one long piece. (I feel the last four songs, "CH 375 268 277 ARS" through "The Threat Posed...", could have been an EP - in exactly the order they appear on the record - which alone would have turned heads.)
All of that said, a Dillinger record would be a disappointment without some barrier-breaking in terms of rhythmic complexity. The king of the crop in this department is undeniably "Understanding Decay". The feeling of listening to this song - you can feel the song in your body - is one of constant hesitation, anticipation, and release, the latter of which quickly snatched away from you in the matter of an eighth note or so. It's not a comfortable song. Even their prior attempts at completely shitting on past musical norms in metal have not nearly reached the level of "Understanding Decay". It is arguably the crown jewel of the record - if you're more the type you prefers the more aggressive face of the Janus that is DEP. I am. For those on the other side of the fence, you probably have a lot more to sink your teeth into on OOUITK than you ever have. But you don't have as triumphal a hymn as "Understanding Decay".
A few come close though: the title track, a silky, ultra-melodic downtempo arrangement, features Greg's pleasant falsetto and brusque hints at both ambient Calculating Infinity-era guitar flirtations and something you rarely hear from DEP: simple, meaty power chords, done not distastefully. "Paranoia Shields" incorporates Greg's tight-mouthed, talk-whispered verses broken occasionally by a surprisingly operatic hook. Overall, Greg takes what feels like the lead on these pieces. Like the unappreciative bastards we all tend to be, we quickly forget whilst sucking Ben's dick 24/7 that Greg has an incredible rhythmic intuition, singing and screaming range along multiple style dimensions, and incredibly precise timing. (Listen to "Paranoia Shields" and tell me it doesn't feel like he couldn't be conducting the band with his word placement as his metaphorical baton.)
All together, One of Us Is the Killer is almost pristine - it showcases the songwriting, musicianship, and performance talent of an incredible group. If Metal as a genre had a seat at the United Nations of Music, DEP would be a fitting representative. (They would probably sit next to Nicki Minaj and collectively take a fiery shit on her face.) But it's not perfect. The music has slowly been losing its hardcore edginess ever since Calculating Infinity, and I still miss it deeply - I know I'm not alone here. OOUITK sees Dillinger doubling down on forever closing the door on their pre-Miss Machine music. (And I think that's just fine from a certain perspective.) I find some of the riffs a little too dinky and delicate - the best example by far is "Hero of the Soviet Union": instead of achieving this aggressive break from the moodiness of the title track, you get a short stint followed by a quick relapse into clownery that I didn't find convincingly "Dillinger". All of that said - and I'll admit that these quibbles are particularly subjective - this is their best record. Listening to it reminds me that metal deserves the kind of outward awe and respect earned by some of the most stereotypically "high-minded" genres, let alone the commercial success of everyday, boilerplate pop.
What does this record mean for the future of the Dillinger Escape Plan? Lacking basic fortune-telling abilities, I can only speculate. My intuition is that DEP will become a more "challenging" listening experience as time goes on. They are becoming more "heady", deep, difficult, mentally stimulating. Listening to OOUITK is more of an intellectual exercise than Option Paralysis. In my opinion, this can unfortunately be rocky territory for otherwise successful metal outfits. Between the Buried and Me are now borderline progressive rock in the ilk of Dream Theater, their music becoming ironically less "them" as they've struggled to write longer opuses, longer and complicated transitions, more involved lyrical content, and more dynamic instrumentation. The Faceless' newest record was frankly saddening for similar reasons. The newest Baroness, while explicitly not an attempt at more technical music, was nonetheless an attempt at a new sound, and results were, to put it mildly, mixed. These were premier disappointments for me, all borne out of this underlying (and common among musicians who actually give a fuck) need to innovate, evolve, and continue to be surprise to listeners. This is a high-risk/high-reward proposition, and recent events point to the serious effects of "losing your sound" - why people even loved you in the first place - for the cause of development simply for developing's sake. Music is a fairly undifferentiated genre - the nature of the music is such that it is tough to "find a sound". Trying to achieve this is one of the most rewarding challenges of creating heavy music. But DEP won that game long ago, and perhaps, like BTBAM, are bound to get bored with the spoils of their victory. DEP is showing us their hand on On of Us Is the Killer: they are attempting a similar maneuver towards change. But my judgment is that DEP may pull it off. So far, so good.
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