THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN are not only one of my favorite bands musically but they are also some funny mother fuckers, as evidenced by our now-legendary interview with Greg from a few years back. The band just got back from their European mini-tour to get them all psyched up to finishing writing and recording their next CD, Operation: Paralysis and both Greg and Liam (bassist) posted updates that lead to some epic lulz. Check em out…
Greg's Update:
"We just wrapped up a quick two weeks of European shows, starting in Long Island and finishing up in Finland. Every show was invigorating for us, including a lot of places we haven't played in a really long time.
"Our producer, Steve Evetts, had a revelation and decided that he will no longer be producing records but would rather come with us and do lights for free, so if anyone wants a free light guy, he's your guy!
"In typical light guy fashion, the quality of the shows quickly became measured by 'how killer the lights were' that night.
"When we go in to the studio in a month, Steve will probably have strobe lights and a smoke machine in the vocal booth.
"Anyhow, we played with a ton of great bands over in Europe, in a ton of unsuspecting places that kick hordes of ass like Poland and Belgium. What did we learn? We learned that Alex Skolnick from TESTAMENT pretty much drives the school bus of metal guitar soloing…blindfolded, and with his feet. We learned that 99% of Europeans have never seen a Mexican. We learned that German bus drivers think it's OK to drink beer and drive because they are 'rock and rollers!'
"We have a month and a few days to finish writing our new album, 'Option Paralysis', before we record from the end of August to the beginning of October. We'll be checking in from our MySpace and Twitter accounts and all that stuff, and we'll be sneaking you song titles and snippets of demos as well as behind-the-scenes videos from now until the release."
Liam's update:
"For our friends at home, let's recount some of last month's hijinx from the road. We spent two weeks in the States, touring to and from Bonnaroo in Tennessee and beyond, followed by three more in Europe doing mostly festivals, with highlights including Quart in Norway, Dour in Belgium and Ilosaarirock in Finland.
"This was the first time in Europe with our new drummer Billy [Rymer], who rivals me for the title of 'Band's Pickiest Eater' as well as the first time we played 'Mouth of Ghosts' and 'Horsehunter' over there, and both seemed to go over quite well.
"Krakow, of all the cities we visited, surprised me the most this time around; there's really something special happening there. Whether a backstage has wireless access more or less determined the mood of the day, and when we could not find any WiFi (pronounced 'wiffy'), we were forced to do extreme things, like asking each other questions about whether we'd be more likely to bang Bea Arthur or Natalie Portman under circumstances not fit to admit or share here.
"We dumped out our proverbial 40s for Michael Jackson in Vienna, expecting him to stage the biggest comeback of his career and jump out of his coffin during his televised service…unfortunately, that didn't happen. The world was weird with him in it, but I guarantee it's going to get even weirder without him.
"Speaking of weird, the 'Option Paralysis' recording is supposed to start in about a month. Seems like only yesterday we were in California recording 'Ire Works', and now we're headed back again… buy that ticket, take that ride."
