Ben Weinman may be the most loved man in metal – or mathcore, depending on what you subscribe to – and now it’s time to show him we care when he returns for Soundwave with The Dillinger Escape Plan. He’ll be in the company of friends (although recent news of the Stone Temple Pilots withdrawing is a shock), and Ben tells me that being Soundwave alumni has its perks.
“We love to play Australia – it’s our favourite place in the world. It’s so refreshing to be in a place that’s so far away, but at the same time I feel so at home with the people. You’re a warm and comfortable type of people – it’s great. We’re really excited to be coming back, so I hope it comes across.
“I don’t have the line-up right in front of me but there are a million bands I wanna see.” Ben counts the guys of Thy Art is Murder, Trash Talk and Mastodon as great friends, while TDEP are set to play Sidewaves with fellow Jersey boys Glassjaw and Japan’s Dir En Greg: “We’ll be doing a lot of touring in the next few months.”
Once they touch down back in the States after Soundwave, TDEP will tour the US and Canada before heading to Europe.
“I’m looking forward to getting back to touring. Over the new year and Christmas I’ve had a lot of time to relax and my New Year’s resolution is to be as positive as possible. It’s been a crazy twelve months – a lot of people around me have had unfortunate things happen to them and there’s been a weird energy about. So I wanna make sure that moving forward in 2014, I appreciate all the good things and make sure I do whatever I can to influence good energy … without sounding too airy fairy, sorry!” he laughed awkwardly. “I just want to do my part.”
His contribution to the metal scene since forming TDEP in 1997 has not been overlooked. With his use of unique and unusual time signatures when playing guitar, he almost single-handily spawned a new genre – mathcore.
“We were pretty much the first band to ever be called that. At first it was weird because the whole reason we became a band was to be something new and to break boundaries, not follow some kind of genre. But then they went away and created a genre to put us in! So at first we really resisted it, but as we’ve gotten older I’ve become proud of it,” Ben admitted.
“At the time we came out, there weren’t really any bands from the punk and hardcore scene that were pushing themselves as musicians. There was a lot of heavy music but none of it really had that punk energy and aggression to it. So now, the truth is, it’s great that there are other bands that considered us an influence and call themselves this category that didn’t really exist before us. I don’t know why we’d been resisting it for so long, you know?” he chuckled. “It’s not for us to decide, it’s for everybody else. In a way we just do what we do.”
They certainly do what they do well. One of Us Is the Killer (2013) is their fifth studio album, and Ben couldn’t help dropping hints about what’s next. “We’re working on some new stuff and we’re hoping to put it out just as a limited edition or a leak from our own label [Party Smasher Inc]. Maybe we’ll make a 7-inch or single that you can only get if you come see us play. We haven’t done anything like that in a really long time, and we’re just gonna try to record something special for our fans.”
When & Where: The Hi-Fi – February 27 and Soundwave Melbourne – February 28
Writen by Natalie Rogers