It’s been 26 years since The Dillinger Escape Plan released their debut album, Calculating Infinity (1999), and founding guitarist Ben Weinman seems surprised that the band still has such a dedicated fanbase.
The band spent the better part of last year celebrating the album’s 25th anniversary, and even reunited with original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis, who left the band after Calculating Infinity, and was replaced by Greg Puciato. Recently, Weinman was reflecting on the band’s career while talking with Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips, when the journalist asked Weinman about his thoughts on The Dillinger Escape Plan’s impact over the years.
“It’s really weird,” he replied, as transcribed by Blabbermouth, “because I just got off an interview with a young guy who does a radio show that does predominantly metal and hardcore music, and he said something like he didn’t think his show would exist if it wasn’t for us, ’cause so many of the bands he felt were influenced by us. And that just sounds impossible to me. It just seems insane to me.”
“It’s weird to be a band that I felt never reached real commercial success, but also almost every day someone says something that totally blows me away that I can’t believe that somebody likes this band or it meant something to them like it does, or it could influence their band or whatever,” he added.
“So, it’s sometimes a tremendous amount of impostor syndrome,” Weinman confessed. “It’s hard to believe anybody would even like this music, but almost every day I get a really cool kind of reminder that I guess we did do something that was important to some people.”
The Dillinger Escape Plan is still dope
Breaking this down, I think it’s understood that Weinman is not being ungrateful for the band’s fan base. He’s just being transparent that, from his perspective, he doesn’t fully grasp how their brand of chaotic mathcore would have had so much longevity.
I think the biggest tell here is Weiman’s comment about feeling “impostor syndrome,” which indicates that he may not fathom the impact that TDEP had on the evolution of the metalcore movement in the late 90s/early 2000s. I’m no music historian OR psychologist, but there’s a chance that Weinman just does not see their contribution as equal to bands like Converge, or Botch, or Coalesce.
Look, I’m someone who’s been a fan of The Dillinger Escape Plan for these last 25 years. I’ve had all their albums, bought their t-shirts at shows, and one of my favorite hats ever was a gray military cap with their logo on it that I wore well past its expiration date.
I’m convinced that you could play Calculating Infinity for someone today and tell them it was brand new, and they would believe you. That’s how perfect that album is and how well it’s aged.
But, as much as I love TDEP’s music, in those early years, it was kind of their energy and accessibility that made them stand out among the pack. They crafted clever heavy music but weren’t as morose or brooding as their peers, and that was a nice change of pace in a scene full of so much gloom. Their live shows were always very unpredictable, and it felt… fun… instead of cathartic.
You don’t work through your shit at a Dillinger Escape Plan show. You forget about it and have a good time. I still feel that way when I listen to them at 40. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear my Miss Machine vinyl and ibuprofen calling.
The post ‘It’s Really Weird’: Ben Weinman Can’t Believe The Dillinger Escape Plan Still Has Such Dedicated Fans appeared first on VICE.
