"Irony Is a Dead Scene" gets rated by The Portland Mercury

The Dillinger Escape Plan
with Mike Patton
Irony Is a Dead Scene
****

On their latest EP, the Dillinger Escape Plan hand you the loaded weapon of 18 minutes of pure skull-fucking material, spray four rounds of industrial-thrash-hardcore violence, and disappear into the wake of their own smoking gun. DEP have never taken sides between metal and hardcore, and this release continues to elevate the band above the confines of both genres, with guest Mike Patton heightening the freak factor, as usual. Between squirming, Locust-like sci-fi theatrics, Patton's suave-psychopath vocals, and lightning strikes of electronic noise, DEP map out a catastrophic outlook on subjects as varied as Hollywood Squares and evil canines. Although all four songs are equally ferocious, the best thing on this disc has to be the band's cover of Aphex Twin's twisted track "Come to Daddy." In the hands of this perfectly deranged DEP/Patton pairing, Twin's classic becomes a delirious, demonic call to devour the innocent and then erupts into hellacious screaming and dark, fuzzy noise.

JENNIFER MAERZ

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