The Dillinger Escape Plan with Mike Patton “Irony is a Dead Scene EP” (Best of the Decade)

Though the explosive grinding punk of the Dillinger Escape Plan’s self-titled EP in 1997 turned quite a few heads, Calculating Infinity‘s psychotic, ultra-complex re-imagination of metal and hardcore music in 1999 suggested the band was developing at the speed of light. As the year closed, it was hard to imagine that anything would derail them. Behind the push of their brilliant new album, the band toured hard into the new millennium and for a short period of time all was good.

Then things changed. The road took its toll, and stressed out vocalist Dimitri Minakakis quit DEP and left the band to fend for themselves. However, as much of a bummer as it probably was for Ben Weinman and crew at the time, eventually things would work themselves out. With all the cards stacked against them, they would receive their opportunity and allow this to someday be remembered as the moment when their career arc became just as satisfyingly unpredictable as the music that they create.

Enter Mike Patton.

Four years and ]more than 10 releases had passed since he had left Faith No More, and Patton was seemingly hellbent on a mission to work with all of his favorite underground musicians. For Dillinger the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Patton’s work was consistently becoming more off-the-wall (with projects like Fantomas, Tomahawk, and his John Zorn collaboration), but he had never worked with artists who embraced true sonic extremity in the way that the proto-mathcore of Calculating Infinity demonstrated. Call’s were made, time was set aside, and then, through the stroke brilliance, Mike Patton was the active singer of the Dillinger Escape Plan for one brief recording session.

The resultant work, Irony is a Dead Scene, is a true collaboration in every sense of the word. DEP’s nigh-incomprehensible hardcore-meets-death metal shred fests lead the charge, and the wildly versatile vocals of Patton breath fire into the tracks in a way that wouldn’t have been imaginable with Minakakis’ violent approach. It’s an album that coalesces the artists’ most alluring traits without sacrificing any of their visceral individuality. On “Hollywood Squares” they smash down the door in just the way that you hoped they would before descending into an incredibly animated, complex arrangement of bizarre metallic hardcore. The schizophrenic oddity that is “Pig Latin” recalls the outlandish surrealism that’s prominent in Patton’s work with Mr. Bungle as much as it does the pulsing grind of the Dillinger Escape Plan’s previous albums. On the final original track of the EP, “When Goods Dogs Do Bad Things,” the soundtrack truly reaches its peak. Of the four, the song receives the most unrestrained performance from Patton, and against the epic dissonance that the Dillinger Escape Plan carves out for him, his vocals rage like never before in his career. As the song segues through increasingly calculated levels of insanity, a more appropriate collaboration for these artists couldn’t be imaginable. In fact, its really quite a splendid feat that the cover of Aphex Twin’s “Come To Daddy” which closes the album is the most straightforward track of the bunch. As a capper, the track successfully puts all the artists at center stage at the same time, building up through maddening jazzed out guitar passages and cinematically culminating Irony is a Dead Scene with Patton’s jaw-dropping, spot on vocal replication of the infamous “I want your soul” lyric.

Then, as abruptly as it began, it is all over. Like a Hollywood film, the actors going their separate ways to write the rest of their histories.

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Also: Interview with Mike Patton