DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN IS BUMMING ME OUT

I remember buying a Dillinger Escape Plan Calculating Infinity shirt though it was clearly at least two sizes too large. That's how much I loved DEP and the extent to which I wanted to tell the world about it. But since those days, DEP has initiated a step-by-step process of turning me off. I rejoiced when they sacked their inept first singer for muscleman Greg Puciato, but that's turning out to be a negligible improvement what with all his macho shit. And though Miss Machine was a wildly uneven, occasionally brilliant record, its tech-spaz material suddenly seemed like a total chore next to their effortlessly accessible catchy shit. 

The less said the better about Ire Works and its awful hipster metal title, but at least let's say that DEP mainman Ben Weinman's solution to the dynamics problem (which he acknowledged to me) turned out to be fragmenting their music further; instead of an atonal, screamy tech workout next to a plodding, melodic song (as on Miss Machine), now these parts were jammed together within the same song. Which is fine but the whole thing felt like outtakes left over from Miss Machine. 

The latest straw (monthly line-up changes notwithstanding) is this DEP proclivity for pointless covers that sound just like the orginals, but crappy. Are we to consider it daring when DEP tackles out-of-character songs like "Wish" by Nine Inch Nails, "Angel" by Massive Attack, or gasp a Justin Timberlake song? Snore. Oh you wacky mathcore guys, you sure showed close-minded fans like those two guys still around from your early days. Everybody else just suffers through this inessential shit, not least of all the not-at-all interesting version of Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" (above).