The Dillinger Escape Plan. This isn’t a band for the average metal fan, those who bob their head to predictable rhythms that chug their way to an ultimately anticlimactic end. Followed by song after song of blast beats and uninspired guitar solos. If you want your senses taken for a trip around the block and awaken cold and naked in a dark alley… then Paralysis isn’t an Option, it’s a necessity.
Listening to Option Paralysis instantly transported me to the first time I heard Calculating Infinity. I remember hearing “Sugar Coated Sour”, and it tasted like nothing else. I didn’t think another record could make me feel again, like I did on that day, “I have never heard anything this amazing….ever!”. Option Paralysis proves yet again that for The Dillinger Escape Plan, there is no box.
It’s immediately evident that you are in for something over your head when the ominous guitar chords strum your doom on the record’s intro track “Farewell, Mona Lisa”. The intense progression gives you that anxious excitement that only something more amazing then your expectations could. The standard Dillinger ferocity that we’ve all learned to expect becomes unexpected, faster and louder. Though, Option Paralysis now presents complimentary and sometimes contrasting melodies, breakdowns and emotive piano sections. What!? Elegant jazz piano on a metal record? FUCK yes! There’s not night with out the day, and all the same this record boasts highs and lows to keep you rock’n til your tits melt off.
The band’s sound has really evolved since Calculating. This album sounds BIG, while being made of up a multitude of “tiny” fast sounds. Dissonant guitar strikes, made to stand your hairs on end, while heavy bass and drum progressions maintain a heavy back bone that rock you harder than you will ever be rocked again (until the next record perhaps?). Ben Weinman’s masterful composition of guitar parts surpass those of previous records. His fast riffs sound faster, dissonant chords attack harder, and chugs chug heavier. I guess you could say everything is magnified on Option Paralysis. The band has found out how to be delightfully more obnoxious, while falling deeper into those building grooves.
The drumming of Billy Rymer gave this record the perfect middle ground between the band’s previous two drummers. The expressive finesse of Chris Pennie, and that “Shit Yeah” pocket playing of Gil Sharone all rolled into one, is made apparent in songs like “Room Full of Eyes”. His expert usage of double kick adds balls to sections that the other drummers might have left untouched.
Perhaps the golden nugget that makes Option Paralysis so savory, is the vocals of Greg Puciato, who has come a long away from the days of Miss Machine. Puciato has literally found his voice in this band. The dynamics of his screams alone gave Miss Machine the magnetic force that can’t come from only screaming your balls off. With minute variation he gave us something real. Even more real are Puciato’s evocative building vocal melodies, that transform Option Paralysis in an epic masterpiece. Melodies on songs like “Gold Teeth on a Bum” and “I Wouldn’t if You Didn’t”, cut your soul in half and bring you to your knees singing “Couldn’t you help me, so that I may believe…” Puciato’s growth into a screaming/ singing/ whispering/ blood thirsty monster gives the band the ability to be anything it wants to be.
Option Paralysis’ final track confirms that The Dillinger Escape Plan will always give you something you never expect. This band dares to stay true artists, pursuing whatever their bizarre twisted minds come up with. They continue to push the real line, the one that boxes in artists to their genre, their sound, saying “can not, should not”. With a discography like this, it’s clear Dillinger can not, and will not be stopped. Go buy it.