The Dillinger Escape plan are a five-piece band from New Jersey who have been in existence for ten years. What they do is loosely defined as hardcore - the brutal younger brother of punk rock that emerged on the US East and West coasts circa 1980. They number amongst their ranks virtuosos of their instruments who could no doubt make a healthy living playing in free jazz fusion ensemble or as professional session musicians, but who instead devote their lives to releasing cutting edge records for independent labels and playing club-sized shows to niche auditions for close to fuck-all money.

There is music so forceful, uncompromising and devoid of melody that they � like all the best bands � are destined to have only limited commercial/financial success. This is a band who, when faced with their biggest ever audience and a chance to woo the fickle UK critics with performance on the main stage at the 2002 Reading Festival � chose instead to make an artistic statement.

�You�re going to see a lot of shit on this stage today,� said pitbull-necked singer, Greg Puciato, dropping his pants and squatting, in reference to the line-up of stodgy corporate US rock bands. �You might as well see some more.�

With onstage cameras beaming the image onto giant screens, over their Sunday breakfasts fifty thousand people were treated to the close-up sight of the flexing anus of the frontman as he squeezed out a link, wrapped it in a carrier bag and threw it into the crowd, who promptly threw it back. It was the single greatest rock n� roll moment the UK has seen this decade.

But you really don�t need to know about of that, nor the fact these are smart guys, with college degrees and future careers in new media or some shit; such details are mere footnotes to the music.

�Sugar-Coated Sour� is a prime example of The Dillinger Escape Plan�s sonic thuggery, the sound of metal and mathematics colliding in a short, sharp musical frisson. It�s so gratuitously technical it�s borderline masturbatory, so brutish it�s lobotomized. But it is also so fast and loud and thrilling, that it is near-genius (and I never describe anything as �genius�).

Because these boys wield their guitars like axes. Not �axes� as in the corny hard rock guitar free sense of the word, but actual weapons to swing at your head, slice off any free-flapping appendages, cut you down to size. Or maybe they�re more machine guns, the way they wear them across their chest. The band�s physical stance and their approach to guitar-playing says more than Puciato�s willfully indecipherable lyrics: guitars are not there to be caressed lovingly, they intimate, they don�t warrant respect.

Instead the quintet use them as electrical conductors to be manipulated into soundwaves which - though invisible to the naked eye - can have audible effects upon the physical body. Sickness, head rushes, violence and immense sexual charge are just some of the side effects of when The Dillinger Escape Plan take electricity, add kinetic energy, and turn into a matter. The end result is a big ham-like fist of sound that repeatedly smacks you in face, each mangled note and barked line a suckerpunch to the back of the head, a crack to your fragile cranium. It�s music that says: drop and give me twenty, scumbag, or I�ll make you my bitch.

Simply put, this is the sound of Armageddon and it�s a beautiful thing.

Ben Myers is a published author, poet and music journalist. He also runs the Captains Of Industry record label. Contact Ben on his website here, visit his MySpace here or read more of his work on the showcase section of this site here.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.