HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Miss Machine – The Dillinger Escape Plan

There isn’t really a ‘best’ DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN album. Obviously you can have a favourite – perhaps the batshit frenzy of their 1999 debut Calculating Infinity, or the glorious swansong of 2016’s Dissociation, or indeed any of the outstanding efforts that came between them – but the point is it really would be hard to argue against literally any pick from such a relentlessly consistent discography. If however, there can be a ‘most definitive’ DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN album, then surely such an honour belongs to Miss Machine.





Look, the aforementioned Calculating Infinity was seminal – there is no doubt about that. The world had never and has never heard a record quite like it and it’ll be getting its own Heavy Music History treatment in just a couple of months’ time for its 25th anniversary, but the reason its 2004 successor is up for the prize of ‘most definitive’ should be obvious enough: there are elements – and even people – on Miss Machine that would further define all THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN would become known and revered for that simply weren’t present in the maniacal violence of their first LP.

While it would be untrue to suggest that there was no method to the madness of its predecessor, there was definitely a lot more of it to Miss Machine. Suddenly a band whose biggest hook up to that point had been the panic chord/chug-chug trade-offs of the iconic 43% Burnt were doing full-blown choruses and playing riffs you could actually bang your head to without the help of a calculator – not at the expense of the extremity that made them so compelling in the first place, but somehow in addition to it. If Calculating Infinity had taken more of the hack and slash approach of a deranged killer claiming their first victims, Miss Machine was that same killer five years on: still wildly unpredictable, but also more methodical, and definitely with a few more weapons in the van.


Of course, there is a fire-breathing, head-walking, stage-defiling elephant in the room here. Having parted amicably with original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis in 2001, DILLINGER’s nationwide search for a replacement led them in the October of that year to the inimitable Greg Puciato for easily the most pivotal line-up change of the many in the band’s storied history. With all due respect to Minakakis, Puciato proved significantly more versatile, capable not only of the shouts and shrieks tracks like Panasonic Youth and We Are The Storm required of him, but also of a proper croon that made the likes of Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants and Unretrofied border on once unthinkable levels of accessibility. That Puciato would remain with TDEP until their dissolution in 2017 – arguably becoming as much of the face of the band as their sole permanent member and mastermind Ben Weinman – says it all really: definitive.


Puciato’s recruitment wasn’t the only event set in motion by Minakakis’ departure that would shape Miss Machine either. While only between full-time vocalists for a few months, the band were still quick to turn to a notable early fan of theirs for help in the interim, collaborating with an obvious kindred spirit in Mike Patton for what was to become 2002’s Irony Is A Dead Scene EP. Brief though it was – Puciato had actually been in post for the best part of a year by the time Irony was released – Patton’s involvement had a lasting impact on the band, the EP itself being perhaps unsurprisingly the weirdest release in their entire discography, and crucially allowing them to develop the experimental tendencies they would dispatch a little more measuredly but no less confidently in Miss Machine’s flirtations with jazz-fusion and industrial influences and even straight-up melodic rock just two years later.



And thus Miss Machine presented a fuller picture of all that DILLINGER were and would be capable of in the years to come, their truly hair-raising violence left firmly intact even amid the finer songcraft and bolder experimentation and moments of genuine catchiness. As Aubin Paul of PunkNews wrote in one of the many glowing reviews the album received at the time: “Despite the bands [sic] reputation as progenitors of “math-core” – a reputation they could easily have rested on for the next decade – Miss Machine is possessed of an unmistakable progression and once again demonstrates why the band is one of the most innovative forces in modern music.”

Those words get to the crux of what makes Miss Machine so particularly special in DILLINGER’s back catalogue, and they bring us back to the whole ‘most definitive’ argument we’re trying to make here. This was the album that announced that the band were even more than masters of extremity and violence they had already proven themselves to be, that they would always seek to evolve and innovate – as indeed they did on four more albums to follow, though perhaps never with quite as much of a leap as the one they landed here – and ultimately that they transcended even the barely visible boundaries of a genre they helped pioneer in the first place. If a friend ever asks you where to start with THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN there really is no wrong answer, but as a jumping off point for pretty much any other release in their discography surely this is the obvious choice.



Miss Machine was originally released on July 20th, 2004 via Relapse Records.



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INTRODUCING: LØLØ

“When I was younger, my dream was to be on Broadway,” LØLØ – real name Lauren Mandel – explains. “I never even thought about writing songs, but I always kept a diary. So, when I started to learn guitar in ninth grade, my guitar teacher suggested that I should write songs, which at first, I refused to do because that would be like people knowing my diary entries and I was too embarrassed.”



Her guitar teacher told her that he wouldn’t come back unless she wrote a song, and as she was worried she’d lose him, she tried writing a song that night, and ended up writing ten songs as it came really naturally to her. This marked the start of LØLØ‘s journey to becoming a musician. “After that, I was like, ‘screw Broadway!’” she laughs.

After releasing three EPs – 2019’s Sweater Collection, 2021’s Overkill, and 2022’s Debbie Downer – LØLØ knew that she always wanted to make an album because she loves listening to albums as a music fan. “I always want to add more to the story. Even with the EPs, I put the songs in a specific order, so it told a story. With an album, you have more tracks, so there is more inside scoop of the overall story with more material. But then I wrote the song U & the tin man, that I realised that there was more to this, including crazy visuals and a story. From there, I wrote more songs, but it wasn’t until I wrote the song wish i was a robot that I realised there was two sides of the same coin: falling for people that have no emotions who treat me like shit, and then wishing that I had no emotions, so that I didn’t have to be affected by all of these things and life in general.”

That is why LØLØ‘s debut album is called falling for robots and wishing i was one, a brilliant pop-rock album. Most debut albums skim the surface of who an artist truly is for the sake of testing the waters, but that isn’t the case with LØLØ. Her debut album is raw and honest about heartbreak, feeling emotions too deeply, and it also perfectly captures the zeitgeist of being a woman in the modern era. The track list for the album tells a story of a woman falling in love with a guy and the crazy feelings that come with romantic love, and then realising that he’s still texting his ex girlfriend. “As the album goes on, it tells more of the story,” she explains.


The cover of the album shows LØLØ as a punk Dorothy holding the heart of a robot as they are on a yellow brick road with a emerald castle in the background. “It was inspired by u & the tin man because I thought it’d be cool if I was a punked-out Dorothy because The Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite movies and my dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to be Elphaba in Wicked because that’s my favourite musical. I felt like my album was the same vibe as The Wizard Of Oz is quite whimsical and Dorothy learns that she needs to grow up. The film is also about her learning about love and courage, so I felt like I was Dorothy trying to navigate through this crazy world that we’re in. It’s my first album, so go big or go home.”

The majority of the album was recorded in Nashville. “The recording process was very easy for this. In the past, I’ve sung the demo, and then gone back and re sung it until it was perfect, but this time around, whenever I wrote something, I’d sing it and then left it at that. It was cool because it meant that I got to do the majority of the album with the same producer, who’s called Mike Robinson and it was really fun. I’d go out to Nashville for a week or two every other month, we’d get a bunch of songs, and it was like a fun little getaway where I’d write a bunch of songs, and then we just slowly put it together.”

Even through the album has fifteen songs, there were some songs that didn’t make it onto the final product. “Once I knew what the album was about, I knew I needed a song about this, that, and the other to fill in the rest of the ideas to go with those themes, so there was a bunch that I tried writing that I didn’t think were good enough. Then there was one song that I thought was good enough for the album, but it didn’t really fit the theme of falling for robots and wishing i was one, so I didn’t put it on because I’m a stickler for a theme,” LØLØ explains.

The album never falls into the trappings of chasing the next big thing, but instead involves LØLØ “writing about what was super specific for me, but I’ve always been asked: ‘Did you date my ex?’ because of my lyrics, and I always hope I haven’t dated their exes,” she laughs. “But I think it’s really cool that even though the lyrics are very specific to what have happened to me, we’ve all had shared experiences.”

The shared experiences is why people love LØLØ and why she is quickly growing into one of the most exciting new artists of the 2020s. She isn’t afraid to be raw about life, and falling for robots and wishing i was one exemplifies this, and is one of the many reasons why LØLØ is a name to watch.

falling for robots and wishing i was one is out now via Hopeless Records.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Digital Apocalypse – A Night In Texas

Australian deathcore merchants A NIGHT IN TEXAS return with a new vocalist for their fourth full-length album. After the departure of Ethan Lucas, the band were somewhat quiet, but behind the scenes they were in the studio cooking up Digital Apocalypse.





Bouncing back after some time of not releasing music and losing a band member is always a difficult thing to do. Some bands come back stronger while others can be a shell of their former selves. A NIGHT IN TEXAS have mostly come back stronger, although there are some moments of change that don’t quite fit.

In the sea of a new rising deathcore bands from Australia, A NIGHT IN TEXAS stand tall as one of the pillars of consistent technical deathcore export, and with newly appointed vocalist Sam Cameron taking the reins on this album, many people were wondering how he’d be able to surpass the band’s previous offerings in terms of vocal delivery. On album opener Programmed To Suffer you’ve got layers of winding synths and technically precise guitar riffs from dual string men Cory Judd and Angus Gasson as Cameron’s vocals shift from thunderous growls to feral shrieks with ease.


Drummer Anthony Barone unleashes his full potential on The Destruction Of Everything with his lengthy double kicks behind the crunchy guitars and demonic vocals. Following the trend of various deathcore bands there are a few background symphonic vocals that just intensify the songs to another level. Throughout the rest of the album the band cross the lines between deathcore and djent with their technical sides sometimes overpowering the songs they’re playing before returning to the one-note-power chords that break your neck in seconds.




While the album itself from front to back is great and has some brilliant moments, there are a few things that don’t fit. The change in production is the main thing you’ll notice. Previous albums sound clear, while Digital Apocalypse sounds muddy and does often drown out some of the best background guitars on the album. And while it does add a layer of DIY production to the vocals that makes it feel rougher, some of Cameron’s highs get drowned out in the mix which is a shame because his highs are glass shattering.

Still, even with a few down moments, it doesn’t change the fact that Digital Apocalypse is a great debut for Cameron, and a huge follow-up for the band.

Rating: 7/10



Digital Apocalypse is set for release on August 2nd via Unique Leader

INTRODUCING: Reliqa

The phrase “there’s something in the water” gets thrown around a lot, particularly when Australia’s burgeoning metalcore scene is involved. Over the years it’s given us everything from arena heavyweights to – more recently – forward-thinking music unafraid to blur the lines across sounds from nu metal to pop and prog. New South Wales quartet RELIQA are the latest in that proud tradition, with their debut album Secrets Of The Future dropping on Nuclear Blast this month. We caught up with vocalist Monique Pym – at opposite ends of the day with time differences – to get the lowdown on all things RELIQA.





“All four of us have been friends since the start of high school,” she explains of their beginnings – in fact, for all of them, this is their first band. “We’re friends first, band second. This more or less didn’t start out as anything, we were just friends making music together.” RELIQA’s formation very much lined up with Monique discovering heavy music. “Being friends with them, that’s when I was introduced to heavy music, I wasn’t raised on it. I felt this infectious, dude where’s this been all my life?! Listening then eventually turned into creating, and I started coming into my own as a singer.”

That firm basis in making music as friends came with the underlying feeling that they could, perhaps, eventually turn it into something more. They started going to local shows, and eventually got booked to play some. One thing led to another, and after releasing a few EPs, Nuclear Blast found them and saw – rightly – that RELIQA had something special on their hands. “All four of us have very different listening styles, personal genre preferences,” she begins. “That creates disparity in what you’re coming together to create, but that diversity is something we’ve intentionally tried to explore.”

From Mon’s love of melodic metalcore through to pop, to Miles’ (“the token classically trained member” she laughs) interest in not only prog like POLYPHIA or PLINI but also jazz, and even Brandon [Hutcheson, guitars] being a fan of hardcore alongside K- and J-pop, there’s a huge variety and they’re very conscious not only of a disparity but a real sonic tension across the influences they each bring in. “A lot of bands say they’re genreless; I’m not trying to say anything like that, I just think it’s quite a tough one to pin down,” she grins of their own expansive music.


All of this comes to a head with their upcoming debut album, Secrets Of The Future, one that Mon describes as more than just a debut album, but like a debut for the band all over again now that, through Nuclear Blast, they’re being exposed to a much wider audience. Shifting from what she describes as an almost “production line style” of songwriting whereby one member would deliver demos and the others would help refine, to a far more collaborative process where they tried to “explore the tension between ideas more.”



That’s as apparent on tracks like The Flower as it is Sariah or Keep Yourself Awake; the former sees Mon flowing between twisting melodies and a rap flow, while Sariah is the closest they come to a full ballad with its towering chorus. Keep Yourself Awake meanwhile, finds itself a toe-tapping groove and settles into it, something Mon says they were very conscious and comfortable with doing this time around to help showcase the various styles and tensions between them, giving each time to shine. “It’s part of why we called it Secrets Of The Future too,” she explains. “It feels modern to us, it feels far reaching into the future.”


With such a broad-ranging sound, is there any worry people won’t get it? “It’s a tricky one to introduce people to,” Mon accepts. “There is insecurity in me that the atmosphere we’re creating for ourselves is alienating to anyone. It’s a risky move to make an album that doesn’t confine itself to one aesthetic.” She needn’t worry; Secrets Of The Future oozes authenticity and an unbridled love of exploration. “We like to take risks,” she grins. “People that have latched on, have latched on hard. It feels authentic.”

It’s almost an oxymoron, to be so assured of their identity, and that being ambiguous. “That question of who really is RELIQA, it still exists and it will continue to exist,” Mon enthuses, “the beauty is in leaning into that, this uncertainty of our identity becomes our signature.” The singles so far, Killstar (The Cold World) and Terminal are again, very different-sounding songs, something that she hopes will appeal to people who perhaps don’t typically enjoy either progressive music or metalcore. “There’s something for everyone on that journey, which I really love.”

RELIQA have had a steady rise; for years they’ve put in the work, and to sign to Nuclear Blast is the start of seeing that pay off; to them, it’s an opportunity to seize with both hands. “We’re not afraid to be a little fish in a big pond,” Mon stresses. “Our pond started very small and we outgrew it, but we took everything we learned to the next one. Too many bands think they have to give off big fish energy!” She’s very conscious, as are her bandmates, of where they came from, and that humility shines through; “our roots are the Central Coast, we’re just a bunch of nerds making music together,” she grins.



Secrets Of The Future is out now via Nuclear Blast Records/Greyscale Records.

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YES - FRAGILE (SUPER DELUXE EDITION)

Just about every month during the early '70s, a now-classic prog rock album dropped. And 1971 was seemingly overflowing with 'em: Jethro Tull's Aqualung, Pink Floyd's Meddle, Genesis' Nursery Cryme, ELP's Tarkus, Uriah Heep's Salisbury, etc.

But the undisputed kings of '71 prog were Yes – simply due to the fact that they issued not one, but two classic prog studio offerings that year, The Yes Album and Fragile.

METALLICA PRODUCER FLEMMING RASMUSSEN – “HANK SHERMANN’S AMP WAS USED ON RIDE THE LIGHTNING”

METALLICA PRODUCER FLEMMING RASMUSSEN – “HANK SHERMANN’S AMP WAS USED ON RIDE THE LIGHTNING”





Metallica’s iconic second album Ride The Lightning celebrates its 40th anniversary today. The album contains classics like “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, “Fade To Black”, and “Creeping Death”.



Producer Flemming Rasmussen (who would also producer Metallica’s Master Of Puppets and …And Justice For All) has posted a message about his recollections of the recording:

Evergrey: The Emptiness Of Inner Peace

 

Photo Credit: Patric Ullaeus


Anyone that’s read Ian Winwood’s excellent Bodies: Life And Death In Music will have some understanding of how difficult it is to be a rock star. Yes, it seems like a glamorous way to live and travelling the world to play music certainly has its moments, but the reality of it is gruelling. The parties, groupies and excess get most of the attention, but far more time is taken up by a brutal slog that plays havoc with your head. It’s an endless string of repetitive days on tour buses, where you barely get any alone time and spend a mere fraction of your life at home. For Jonas Ekdahl, it’s time to call it quits. Having spent a significant chunk of his adult life playing drums for EVERGREY, he’s understandably had enough of eating airport food and seeing motorways whenever he looks out of a window. He’s bowing out and while he’s still very much a part of the band’s extended family, his life on the road is at an end.



“When I first started, playing live shows was the best thing in the world, it was the best feeling to be on stage, and nothing could beat that. But over the last couple of years that feeling has shifted towards the songwriting and production aspect of music,” he explains, “it’s now got to the point where I feel that I’d rather be doing that instead.”

At the time of our chat, EVERGREY hadn’t revealed who Jonas’ replacement would be and despite offering him a Twix, he remained tight-lipped, and we couldn’t tease an exclusive out of him (it was later revealed to be veteran Norwegian drummer Simen Sandnes). However, he’s going out on top.

Theories Of Emptiness is EVERGREY’s fourteenth full-length album and quelle surprise, it’s terrific. The Swedes have been reliable workhorses of the European metal scene for decades now, but they’ve really upped their game in the last few years. The conventional wisdom is that 2001’s In Search Of Truth is their best work, but they’ve been on a creative high of late and if anything, are better now than ever before. This is their fourth album in six years and there’s no sign that the well of inspiration is running dry.

“After Escape Of The Phoenix, the pandemic hit, and we figured, instead of taking a break we would just keep on writing,” says Jonas. “We couldn’t go out and do any tours or shows, so we just wrote. We were in a good creative phase at the time. It turned into a new album, and then we kept going. I guess we’re just striking when the iron is hot and making the most of the time we’ve got.”

The surge of creativity triggered by the coronavirus lockdowns resulted in 2022’s A Heartless Portrait (The Orphean Testament), a progressive-minded take on power metal with a dark overtone. It was excellent, but Theories Of Emptiness manages to outdo it. Despite the name, it’s also lighter than its brooding predecessor.

“It deals with different kinds and aspects of emptiness that you can feel depending on the situation. And it doesn’t always have to be a negative one, because I believe that most people are afraid to feel empty, but there’s also a positive side of emptiness as well. If you find inner peace, for example. If you have inner peace, then in a way you have emptiness.”

This optimistic outlook is evident in the music. There are fast riffs, vibrant melodies and catchy choruses aplenty. There’s a noticeable lack of their traditional Gothic-tinged ballads, and there’s even a riotous, crowd-pleasing anthem described as “EVERGREY meets W.A.S.P.” One Heart is a fist-pumping barn burner with fan-submitted backing vocals and the band sound like they’re having a great time playing it. EVERGREY have a reputation for dealing in heavy-going subject matter, but this one is a lung-bursting party song.


Not that they’re going to be skipping through fields of daisies and frolicking in the sunshine though, Theories Of Emptiness still has a touch of darkness about it. There’s a running theme of grief and loss in here, and tracks like To Become Someone Else aren’t afraid to scream their pain at the world. But there’s also a drive to overcome adversity, best exemplified in the uplifting Our Way Through Silence and the aggressive opener Falling From The Sun.

“We can go super dark if we want to, but we also learn to embrace the uplifting side more and more as well, to find the contrast between them.”

In other words, while EVERGREY are as emotive and melancholic as ever, but there’s a cautious hopefulness about them this time. Theories Of Emptiness is a potential Album Of The Year contender, and a fitting swansong for Jonas’ time in the band. It marks the end of an incredible run, but he looks happy and content to be away from the rigours of life on the road and get to sleep in his own bed more often.

And as he’s stepping away from the band who wrote In Search Of Truth, one of the best alien abduction albums ever, there’s one question we’ve got to ask: does he believe in extra-terrestrial life?

“Probably… yeah I think it’s likely. Maybe not flying around in saucers and abducting people, but we have no idea. We barely know what’s happening on this planet. I’m interested in extra-terrestrials and the universe and stuff like that, I think I’m a pretty spiritual guy. So, I’m very open minded to all that. If was only us, that would be super weird.” Keep watching the skis. Skies.

Theories Of Emptiness is out now via Napalm Records.

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