The Dillinger Escape Plan @ Union Transfer.

April 7, 2014

tags: the dillinger escape plan, union transfer

by gwmiller3

Text and images by Rick Kauffman.

The Dillinger Escape Plan played the Union Transfer on Friday and they smashed everything. The end.

But, wait, there’s more.

It wasn’t long ago that Greg Puciato and the Party Smasher crew tore up UT and invited a legion of fans on stage for a rendition of “Sunshine the Werewolf” to close out their show in the most raucous way possible.

They must have enjoyed it so much that this time around, they started the festivities off with inviting the crowd to “get the fuck onstage,” “more, we need more,” to kick things off right with “Prancer” from their newest album One of Us is the Killer.

DEP seems to pride themselves on performing sets with samples from throughout their career — everything from wayback “Mullet Burden” from Under the Running Board to cuts from Miss Machine to newer tracks from Ire Works, Option Paralysis and Killer and of course the always crowd-favorite “43% Burnt” from the Calculating Infinity days. The band never grows old, they have simply evolved while staying true to their roots. Each new album has a new anthem and serves to once again solidify the band as both mavens and pioneers.

Singer Puciato, guitarists Ben Weinman and James Love, bassist Liam Wilson, a familiar face at the door of the First Unitarian Church in past years and drummer Billy Rymer perform as frantically as their brand of tech metal is wild. If you don’t watch closely you could lose sight of one of them as Puciato tends to climb on speaker stacks or vanish into a mass of humanity. Weinman is equal parts mesmerizing and terrifying as he charges the crowd, windmilling the guitar while those in the front row wince in fear.

The Dillinger Escape Plan is a band that will intimidate you and on Friday night, they did so in spectacular fashion.

Killer got the most love of the evening with four songs off the 2013 album being performed. But, it was songs like ‘Panasonic Youth’ and the closer ‘Sunshine the Werewolf’ that whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

In support of DEP was Trash Talk from California, Retox, which features Justin Pearson (most notable for his work helming another noise-punk outfit, the Locust), and The Shining.