That's it, screwheads. It's over. Pack up your trunks, deconstruct the drum kit, and hightail it back to Athens, 'cause
the Dillinger Escape Plan
just handed you your ass. Again. "Surprise!" new vocalist
Greg Puciato
begins on
"Van Damsel."
"It's not what you thought as it runs a dead stop." A thousand bands would've quit at "...what you thought";
Dillinger
adds "runs a dead stop," and makes you leap out of the way of its
hardcore
car crashing into the
jazz
establishment. No kidding! After five years, the band has lost nothing, only gained. Time signatures are a play toy, genres are a joke, and the wannabes' goofy "I'm so tortured, listen to me scream" is nowhere to be found. Here, jarring instrumental changes work as a bitches' brew of stealthy genius, sticking you with a shiv and changing faces in the dark. Technical
metal
, righteous
, twittering
interludes, and starkly melodic, seemingly
post-punk
-inspired segments all put the punters soundly in their place.
Miss Machine
doesn't even really seem that angry. Well, not anger for anger's sake, anyway. Cuts like
"Panasonic Youth"
and
"We Are the Storm"
are fueled by a manic alchemy of
, and
Puciato
's veins couldn't have survived the sessions. But the rage is artful; it's an integral part of
's larger performance. In the near future, rich women and fuddy-duddies will consider
through opera glasses as sweaty children lash each other with cat-o'-nine-tails. There's nothing more to say -- the next true image of
rock & roll
has crawled out of the swamps of Jersey. ~ Johnny Loftus