I again like to state that this is their best work, it might be ire, but it’s their fucking best. It’s an album I’ve been really anxious to hear, but they lived up to my expectations, and beyond. How could a band, on the forefront of extremity, evolve further? More technical was practically impossible (but they did), faster seemed unreachable (but it is) and some way of innovating mathcore would be out of the question. But guess what, they innovated it. Let me talk you through the album.

 

The first two tracks are what we want to hear from The Dillinger Escape Plan. Fast short songs that you can’t follow for two seconds the first ten times you hear them. Hell yeah, it immediately shows that drummer Gil Sharone is waaaaaaaay better that the departed Chris Pennie. I couldn’t be more happy with this guy holding sticks ‘n’ pedals. Anybody with a rhythmic sense will be caught off guard, trust me.

The real surprise begins with track three; ‘Black Bubblegum’, which shows that Nine Inch Nails has become a greater influence on the music (which is displayed in wuite a number of tracks). It revolves around a catchy yet static beat, with nice melodies and high vocals and it displays that there is a whole lot of interesting music to come. Up next is ‘Sick On Sunday’, which starts out as plain breakcore with an almost black metal like guitar on it. It has a nice little surprise somewhere in the middle, you’ll notice it, trust me.

 

From then on it just keeps getting better. Whether it are the insane mathematic songs like ‘Nong Eye Gong’, ‘Party Smasher’ (which features one of the most incoherent, fucked up but funny riffs I’ve ever heard), ‘82588’ and ‘Horse Hunter’ which features guest vocals from Brent from Mastodon. But besides these instant classics, we’ve got ourselves some real gems on our hands. I’d like to start with the instrumental track ‘When Acting As A Wave’ which is a really rhythmic fucked up beat which features all kinds of electronic sounds like skipping records and such. This makes it sound like breakcore a bit, yet the beat goes strong under this, creating something that is as much catchy as it is jaw-dropping.

The fist single to be for this album is the track ‘Milk Lizard’, which is basically an ingenious rock ‘n’ roll track for about half of it. It even features trumpets (well, sampled trumpets probably) which makes you want to participate in a car chase. Unfortunately halfway through the song it becomes quite emo (to me), which is kind of a bummer. Sometimes I do like it, and sometimes I don’t. But then again, this is the only point of doubt I had with this entire album, so fuck it.

 

My temporary favourite (I’ve already had three or so)  at this moment is ‘Dead As History’. It starts out really calm, but when the guitars kick in after two minutes you hear a beat in the background created with awesome sounds. It is just freaking me out how awesome I consider this. And when the chorus kicks in I reach nirvana. This vocal line is fucking killer!!! And those sounds man, breakcore versus rock/metal is a good choice for sure. The last track ‘Mouth Of Ghosts’ starts out as an extremely relaxed jazz track, which gradually builds up to a rock track. A nice closing of a milestone of a record. FUCK!

 

I’m sorry my review has become a huge story, but I wouldn’t be satisfied if I didn’t tell you everything. I can say that if you like the previous album you should immediately pick this one up. It’s catchy chaos, it’s a living hell with structure, it’s everything and nothing. It’s one of the best records of this year. It’s Ire Works by The Dillinger Escape Plan. And it gives me goosebumps.