“Calmness is a wasted breath.”
From “Weak” by God Mother
For 20 years, The Dillinger Escape Plan, with its lead guitarist and founder Ben Weinman, have been giving us searing heavy metal music.
The Dillinger Escape Plan is considered by many to be the best mathcore band of all time—with an original fusion of heavy metal and hardcore characterized by unusual time signatures and complexity. Rolling Stone called Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity (1999) one of the greatest metal albums of all time and described their final album Dissociation (2016) as “…ferociously eclectic as anything the band has done in the past, Dissociation is a twisted turnpike pile-up of off-kilter hardcore, glitchy electronica, chaotic jazz-metal and fist-fighting hard rock, with genuine hooks occasionally poking through the carnage.”
Much to the chagrin of metal fans, Dillinger Escape Plan has announced that their final show will be December 29th 2017.
Even with this looming transition, Ben Weinman, who is a husband and father, as well as the founder of the record label and artist collective, Party Smasher Inc., has found that life and metal go on. And looking to the future, Party Smasher Inc. has set its sights on a new Swedish heavy metal band, God Mother, whose album Vilseledd was described by Pitchfork as “…the sonic equivalent of this hellish Nordic feast.” And when God Mother opened for The Dillinger Escape Plan in February, Weinman was so thoroughly impressed with their sound and commitment that he signed God Mother and declared “Torch officially passed!”
The term “passing the torch” is commonly used to describe how the spirit of one entity, such as Dillinger Escape Plan, can be seen as influencing or being embodied by subsequent entity, in this case, God Mother. To get a better understanding of this phenomenon, I talked with Weinman and God Mother drummer Michael Dahlström.
And what I found was that passing the torch isn’t really about passing anything along, per se. It’s about recognizing the uniqueness of your own fire and being inspired by the unique fire of others.
For Weinman, Dillinger’s music has always been life-and-death. “I’ve always been someone who has had trouble enjoying the everyday things that the average person finds exciting. The music I have made and the music that has moved me has given my life meaning,” Weinman told me. “It’s all about energy for me. Being able to absorb it and transfer it with creativity keeps me alive…writing and performing Dillinger songs has been the only thing to give me peace in my head. I’m like a shark. I need to keep moving or I can’t survive. The music I have created with Dillinger and the shows we have played have been like the air I breathe for many years.”
Dahlström described how for him, music is about emotional life. “For me good music has always been about creating feelings regardless of if it’s joy, anger or sadness,” Dahlström told me. “God Mother is about energy and intensity and we try to bring as much of that as we can into our music, both in the studio and at live shows.”
And because music can be so vital to a musician, it can naturally lead the artist to focus on the importance of the music for oneself rather than others. As Weinman explained it, “Dillinger has been a very selfish outlet for me – other people enjoying my work in the band has been a complete bonus.” Dahlström concurred, “In the end we are still making the music for ourselves.”
One of the hallmark features of The Dillinger Escape Plan is that there is no hallmark feature. They crave originality, and you never really know what they are going to do next. And Weinman wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Every note we play has a purpose and every time we play them the purpose is different. But they always lead you somewhere,” Weinman explained. “For some that is frustrating. “Why isn’t your music more predictable!” people say. “I can’t tap my foot to you guys!” Well, then go listen to music written by people who live and think in loops like robots. They are all around you.”
As a teenager playing music, Dahlström soon recognized that The Dillinger Escape Plan was doing something unique. “The Dillinger Escape Plan has been a big inspiration to me for a long time. I remember when Miss Machine was released back in 2004 and I was 15 years old. I bought the record and, at first, I did not really get the music since I mostly listened to Iron Maiden and Metallica at the time,” Dahlström recalled. “But the more I listened to it the more a got into it and started to actually understand what they were doing. I realized music can sound in many different ways and that these guys were doing it just for the love of music and not for anyone else. That grew a seed in me that has been growing ever since.”
God Mother certainly seems to have taken to heart the lessons they learned from Dillinger as they explore their own sound through experimenting with different styles and approaches. Metal Injection described: “furthering the madness with each piece as they blend noisy, sludgy, hardcore into the melting pot. …one thing is clear: this album will fuck you up.”
Dahlström discussed how they approach making their music. “I think one key ingredient to making a really heavy album is the dynamics. To make the fast parts feel fast you need slow parts and to make the heavy parts feel even heavier you need some softer parts. Our motto has always been quality over quantity and keeping things short and to the point. Hopefully people who listen to us feel the same thing we are feeling when we’re playing it.”
So it was perhaps predictable that when the bands finally crossed paths, they clicked. Dahlström was thrilled that they signed with Party Smasher Inc., in part, because knew that Weinman would understand what God Mother was experiencing.
“This is our first signing to a bigger record label so we don’t have too much to compare it with but we have felt so welcomed by everyone at Party Smasher right from the start. P.S.I being a pretty new label with not too many other bands on it yet, makes us feel like they really care for us and that we are being treated very generously. Without calling any names I know a lot of people who have signed with other “bigger labels.” And when they get there, they are just a drop of water in a sea of bands and no one really gives attention to them. That is really not the case for us,” Dahlström said. “Party Smasher being started by Ben Weinman who himself is both an active musician and also comes from the DIY mentality made the choice easy. They have helped us book some shows and other management stuff you might not expect from a normal record label.”
And yet while there was a sense that they had encountered kindred spirits, neither Weinman nor Dahlström were completely comfortable with the “torch passing” metaphor. To a degree, they recognize that their individual fires are burning brightand quite independently.
“I wouldn’t say that it is keeping the fire alive in me. But I am extremely grateful to see a band like that and recognize that same fire in them. I don’t think my work has anything to do with it. It’s something you have or you don’t. They have it,” Weinman described. “God Mother are in a place right now that is very similar to where Dillinger was in the late 90’s. They step up to the plate regardless of whether a scene accepts them or how many people are watching them play. They cannot be stopped.”
Because after all, if you really want to emulate The Dillinger Escape Plan, the last thing you’d want to do is mimic The Dillinger Escape Plan.
“The only thing I can say about “having the torch passed”, is that it has been a bit strange when people compare us to and call us “The New Dillinger,” Dahlström said.
“There will only be one Dillinger Escape Plan and we are happy just being God Mother.”
