Noise Road

The hourglass is never right side up, and all the time we try to tear the script up;

Forgetting all the sour for the sweet, the paragraph has never seemed so empty

Or….

Moody vs the Dillinger Escape Plan at the Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium.

06/02/10

 

I’m standing centre of stage in a small club, sipping the local cheap beer, Stella Artois.  Hardcore dudes with tattoos on their skulls kiss each other hello on the cheek.  As the venue starts to fill, my ears are full of “excusez-moi” as the natives pass.  This is the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, Belgium.

With no opening act for the evening, the band boards the stage at around 20:30.  Guitarist, Jeff Tuttle has his angry face on.  Leading with his guitar, he jumps straight off the stage and pushes his way into the crowd, creating a one man circle pit.  The opening bars of Panasonic Youth blast out from the speakers and Tuttle, whilst wrestling notes out of his guitar, starts bouncing off punters on the floor.  Being equal parts dumb shyte and excited by the chaos, I didn’t shift position and found myself on the edge of the circle.  After bouncing off a few Belgian kiddies, he runs straight at me, jumping into me with his back, sending the last couple of sips of my Stella flying into the patrons behind me.  This is the Dillinger Escape Plan.

 

I flew into Brussels from Oslo a couple of nights previous.  I really should be back in the UK looking for a job after the cash haemorrhage that was Norway.  However Dillinger seem to be playing tiny venues on this short euro run, causing the UK gig to be sold out before I even knew about it.  My favourite live act is touring Europe.  Their Brussels date isn’t sold out yet.  I’ve never been to Brussels.  I didn’t really seem to have a choice in the matter.  The gods wanted me to go to Brussels.

 

After a couple of days of waffles bought from holes in the wall, waffles bought from Kombi vans, sipping Leffe and Trappist beers with the old timers in a cafe, and chowing down on baguettes avec jambon et fromage, I walked from my temporary digs in the seedy part of town to the venue just on the edge of the old town – the Ancienne Belgique, or as locals call it, the AB.

 

Back home, in North Adelaide, an AB is what you call a serving of yiros meat, chips and all kinds of sauces – It’s named such because it looks like… well, an ABortion.  Although there was a little street, dense with kebab shops, around the corner from the venue, sadly there was no yiros meat served at the Ancienne Belgique.  Despite this massive disappointment, the AB is still a pretty cool venue, with a good layout and sound – but it is definitely small for a band of Dillinger’s notoriety. 

This would be my fourth time seeing DEP. I first got into them when they recorded the EP, Irony is a Dead Scene, with Mike Patton.  The following full length, Miss Machine, with current vocalist, Greg Puciato, was my favourite release of that year.  I had that feeling of excitement when you discover something new and different.  I bought up the back catalogue and was eager to see this stuff played live when they announced a gig at Fowler’s.  However, I had heard nothing about their live show.

Unable to convince anyone to go with me, I went alone and was just going to nurse a beer towards the back of the crowd.  Except for Puciato, Dillinger boarded the stage and burst out a few notes before Puciato ran straight across the stage, bounced off the side wall and headed, sight unseen, into the crowd.  Then in the second verse of the same song, guitarist, Ben Weinman, jumped into the crowd.  The energy was too much to just stand there nursing a pint of sparkles.  I surged to the front to join in the fun.  It’s still my favourite gig to this day.

I’ve seen the band twice since.  They played a great set at an awful venue, the old Breakers in sAdelaide.  Tix were $70 – so the gig was far from sold out.  Also the venue is a former pool hall – so it is a massive space in width.  It kinda looked like they were playing to a handful of kids.  And a big percentage of the crowd was hardcore kids – so there was all that martial arts kicks and windmills guff near the front of the stage.  It was a great performance, but it was a shyte atmosphere on the floor.

They came back to Adelaide, last Feb as part of the Soundwave festival.  Puciato climbed the the light rigging.    He and Weinman headed into the crowd.  Later that day they both joined Nine Inch Nails on stage to perform Wish.  A fantastic day – but the real place to see Dillinger is at a sweaty club show.  They create a cauldron in a packed club.  So when I saw the size of the AB, I thought how could a sold out Dillinger gig in this place not be awesome.

 

My moshing days are about 5 years behind me.  Once your hairline is both greying and receding, it’s best to think about just enjoying the sound of the gig.  Head back towards the mixing desk, my friend.  But I know my form in Dillinger gigs.  I’ve got caught up at the front every time.

So when Tuttle was whirling around, I knew I had to be there.  How can you not move your body when the wall of spastic riffing that is Panasonic Youth kicks in?  Studies show that it’s physically impossible.  Panasonic Youth went straight into the chugg-chugg of 43% Burnt.   The crowd would usually be tearing it up at this point – but they weren’t.  The Belgian kiddies were pretty timid.  They were a room full of head nodders. 

I’m never going to judge anyone on how they enjoy their show.  It’s your $20.  Enjoy as you wish, man.  I mean I’m usually a head nodder.  And on a positive note this passiveness meant that I didn’t have to put up with any hardcore-windmill guff.  But with the energy emitted from the stage, Weinman swinging his guitar around his arm, Puciato assaulting the front rows, Tuttle on the floor, how could you not be moving around like Kermit after he announces the next act on the Muppet Show?…  Also the Muppets are now drug free.  They’ve cleaned up and found Jesus.  Click the image below that I took in neighbouring Bruges, Belgium.

 

Those first two tracks are Dillinger’s bread and butter – irregular time signatures, frequently changing up.  The next track was an example of  the diversity that DEP have shown on their last few releases – the gritty bar rock of Milk Lizard which is somewhere between a Jesus Lizard and a Faith No More track with the Dillinger stamp on it.  Shortly after they broke things up again with Black Bubblegum – a sugary pop rock track with NIN glitchy touches.

 

Mid set, for Mouth of Ghosts, main man Ben Weinman switched from guitar to keys and Puciato even produced a mic stand for the first time that I’ve ever seen.  They hadn’t played this cut at any of the shows I’ve been to and I think this track exemplifies why the Dillinger set is better than ever.  Previously Dillinger seemed a little reticent to play live some of their more mellow stuff. 

On the Miss Machine tour they were happy to play the songs where Puciato shows his melodic range and anthemic choruses.  And on the Ire Works cycle they were happy to play the sugary pop of Black Bubblegum and the gritty bar rock of Milk Lizard.  However longer, mellower pieces such as Mouth of Ghosts seemed to miss the cut live.  Perhaps they were scared that it might detract from the intensity of the live show.   I think it definitely adds a dynamic to the set.  A longer song like that also helps out the set length.  When I saw them at Breakers on the Ire Works cycle, they played 16 songs and struggled to crack an hour on stage.

 

Dillinger played two tracks off the soon to be released new album, Option Paralysis.  The tracks sound like what you would expect.  A further integration of the technical/irregular stuff into anthemic FNM style rock.  I’m onboard.

Towards the end of the set, they ramped the intensity back up with ultra aggressive tracks like Lurch, the Mullet Burden and Fix Your Face.  The band had finally broken through the crowds timidness.  When the signature closer, Sunshine the Werewolf, kicked in the crowd were thrusting forward to get their mic time.  Puciato shoves the mic into the front rows for the lines starting from “Destroyer!…”  The crowd as ever surges to join in screaming out the lyrics.  Weinman is on the speaker stacks, Tuttle is hanging into the crowd, and Puciato is manhandling punters by the head, forcing them to yell into the mic with him.

 

There are hardcore bands that can put on a show like this.  However those bands tend to play simplistic music and performance of the actual song is sacrificed for the intensity.  Dillinger play extremely irregular and technical music.  A member of DEP might miss the odd note when he is fighting the crowd – but that will be it.  No other band plays music as complex with the stage energy that they have.

Also most bands that bring this kind of physical attack to a show have short lived careers. These bands break up after burning twice as bright for half as long.  Dillinger, in various forms, have honed their craft for well over a decade.  Their set is no longer just a brutal series of off-kilter riffs and drum patterns broken up by jazzy interludes.  The set includes a much more diverse path from their bread and butter brutal metal to anthem rock to glitchy pop rock – all done with their trademark intensity.

If you’re not a fan by now, there is probably nothing I can do to convince you.  But you sure are missing out on one of the best live acts around.

This entry was posted on February 9, 2010 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Gigs with tags Belgium, Brussels, February 2010, The AB, The Ancienne Belgique, The Dillinger Escape Plan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.