“So we were kind of like, ‘How much can we get away with?’ We were all trying to outdo each other Greg was breathing fire, and I threw my guitar cabinet onto the middle of the stage, and he set it on fire. “It was in Alabama, there were a lot of Christian bands, and the fire marshals were actually talking to us before we played about what not to do,” says Weinman. “I remember that it was a very Christian festival,” says Weinman. Still, the band’s set at Furnace Fest 2002 was pretty extreme, even by their own wild-eyed standards. It was one of those things where, an hour later, we were like, ‘Did that really happen?'”Īs if the Dillinger Escape Plan weren’t already enough of a live force to be reckoned with, the addition of vocalist Greg Puciato – who replaced Minakakis in the fall of 2001 – jacked up the insanity meter several additional notches. The guy just grabbed his face and ran off the stage the crowd just opened up for him, and he ran through them all the way out of the club, and we didn’t see him again. I swung my guitar like a baseball bat and caught him in the face at the same time, our old singer Dimitri was twirling the microphone and hit him in the back of the head with it. So I slapped him in the face with the headstock of my guitar I was like, ‘Come on, man, I just want to finish the set.’ But he kept motioning like he wanted me to come off the stage and fight him, so I told him to come up and get me. “I was just trying to ignore him, but then he poured beer all over my pedals – I didn’t have much money, and they cost a lot to replace. “This guy kept fucking with me during our set for some reason, heckling me and talking shit,” Weinman remembers. “There’s a lot of crazy footage out there of us,” says Weinman, “but there’s also so much crazier stuff that never got filmed, especially in the early days.” Case in point: the mayhem from this particular gig, which doesn’t appear to have been captured on video. June 29th, 2000: Toad’s Place New Haven, Connecticut With the band currently in the midst of what will likely be their last North American tour in support of their mind-scrambling new album, Dissociation, Weinman walks us through 10 of the Dillinger Escape Plan‘s craziest shows. “It’s such an ‘in-the-moment’ experience, where I’m not thinking about anything except the music.” And, of course, what he can climb up and jump off of while playing it. “I think playing live with this band is the thing I’ll miss most about it,” says guitarist and DEP co-founder Ben Weinman, the band’s only remaining original member. Since first emerging from Morris Plains, New Jersey, in 1997, the radically experimental hardcore/jazz/metal quintet has played every show with a complete and utter disregard for their own personal well-being, wowing fans and newcomers alike with the sheer intensity, aggressiveness and (sometimes literal) explosiveness of their unhinged performances. Don’t cry because the Dillinger Escape Plan are calling it a day smile because they’ve somehow managed to stay alive this long.
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