Ire Works

Artist: The Dillinger Escape Plan
Album: Ire Works
Release Year: 2007
Genres: heavy metal, progressive metal



1) Fix Your Face; 2) Lurch; 3) Black Bubblegum; 4) Sick on Sunday; 5) When Acting as a Particle; 6) Nong Eye Gong; 7) When Acting as a Wave; 8) 82588; 9) Milk Lizard; 10) Party Smasher; 11) Dead as History; 12) Horse Hunter; 13) Mouth of Ghosts.


Best Song: Milk Lizard


I almost called this "experimental metal," but I quickly decided not to, since that just seems like a cop-out, a way to lazily categorize something you don't actually know where to place. Truth is, this album really isn't that far out there, even though I doubt any drooling, drug-addled metalhead would ever swear loyalty to a song like "Sick on Sunday." Some of these songs barely include any screaming at all, which is good for me--but not because I think screaming automatically degrades the music. No, this album is special because the screaming becomes a necessary product of the electrifying and brilliant musical motifs. That's a far cry from those metal acts who think screaming and heaviness is a prerequisite of good music (or at least a cheap substitute), when the reverse is actually true. The trick is to write your songs in such a way that it becomes a minor travesty to imagine them without the brutal delivery, and Dillinger do exactly that on Ire Works.

Speaking of which, I must reiterate that I normally hold a bias against metal, for the reasons I stated above. And yet, I love this album, and what initially drew me in was the ever-present groove. Be it a claustrophobic assault like "Fix Your Face" or a smooth, rollicking number like "Black Bubblegum," each song has a real melodic flow underneath all the slamming chords and drum spasms. Oh, and I have to take a moment to praise "Black Bubblegum." Purists will hate me for this, but to hell with them! The chanting verses, with the falsetto at the end of each line, and the furious, head-banging chorus make it irresistible. The other songs have similar moments of revelation, in atmospheric and symphonic passages as well as power choruses, but those are more subtle...which just makes it even more rewarding when they finally occur.

This album sometimes reminds me of King Crimson's Discipline, with the interlocking passages, clever time signature changes, and an emphasis on a cerebral groove, but not even King Crimson dared to throw a jazzy piano breakdown into a metal song. That happens on "Milk Lizard," and it's just one of the many delightful elements of that track. The sinister riff, the suffocating, lustful verses backed by some evil-sounding brass, the solos, and of course the climactic chorus, which we don't even hear until the two-minute mark, are sublime together. The other songs are almost universally great, too, and once again, it's that groove that keeps 'em going down easy (I'm sure there's a sexual double-entendre in there somewhere, but let the freshmen figure it out). Ire Works is meticulous, literate, and fascinating. It's the very model of metal done right.


Rating: 9