Rant n' Rave With John Nagle

I was expecting big things when Option Paralysis came across my desk.  It had received stellar reviews across the board, even from the AV Club. There are guidelines for reviewing hard rock records.  They are judged by heaviness, virtuosity, intensity and dynamics.  After you listen for a while, you start to settle into a groove.   I thought I was going to write a few paragraphs about the heaviosity and then move onto the next one.  There is always something to listen to, and the Dillinger Escape Plan was just another record on my schedule.  I was wrong.

I had a visceral reaction to this record.  It made me nervous, excited, tense, and a little scared.  When people talk about heavy metal, they talk about the riff or the vocal.  There is one tangible element that you grab onto and say, “This is what makes it special.”  I couldn’t grab onto anything, and that frightened me.  The formula was irrelevant.  I had a similar reaction to the first three notes of “Black Sabbath.”

The main focus of Option Paralysis is not the riff, but the background.  The core guitar riffs are so blunt that it’s easy to write off the record as mindless grindcore.  Buried beneath the riff are short spindly arpeggios.  They weave in and out of the music like a dentist’s drill, burrowing their way into your skull.  They provide a sense of general unease that is absent on so many records these days.  They act as a warning shot, clearing the way for an overpowering wave of guitars.

Like many bands, The Dillinger Escape Plan plays with the dynamics between soft and loud.  Most bands use the quiet moments as a way to inject melody into the aggression.  There are many quiet moments on this record, but they are a brief truce from the aural assault.  The most frightening part of the entire record comes near the end, the piano interlude on “I Wouldn’t You Didn’t.  The piano is grand and pretty, but there is unease.  The notes sound nervous, waiting for the aggression that lurks beneath the surface.  Lead singer, Greg Puciato, also plays into this dynamic.  He sings with authority, but his vocals are muffled.  Traditionally, frontmen have projected power and mastery.  The few moments of vulnerability make the onslaught even more devastating.  Even the guy at the center of the storm can’t control the machine.

I was raised on the traditional heavy metal setup: twin guitar attack, pounding rhythm section, charismatic frontman.  There is nothing traditional about Dillinger Escape Plan.  The riffs come faster, the drums are machine guns and the frontman is on the verge of collapse.  Many people reading this will listen to the sample and say, “What the hell is this?! Where’s the dive-bombing?”  That type of kneejerk reaction is a good thing, because when was the last time you were actually challenged by this type of music?  Metal’s most ardent detractors claim that it is a dinosaur that has never evolved.  That’s part of what makes the genre so great.  Trends may come and go, but The Number of the Beast and Master of Puppets remain pristine.  However, metal’s familiar tones can also lull us into a state of complacency.  This is not speed, thrash, power, traditional, hair, doom, stoner, death or black.  Wikipedia tries to call it “mathcore.”  This record is too good to categorized.  If you lock it in a box, you are missing the point.  Option Paralysis will scare the hell out of you, but you won’t be able to turn away.  To put it bluntly: It’s epic, dude.