The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato recently took part in an extensive interview with Revolvermag.com for an upcoming issue. An unabridged version of the conversation has since been posted online and finds Puciato addressing the bands new album.
His various side projects—including mention of a new one dubbed The Black Queen—Jeff Tuttle‘s departure, the bands signing with Sumerian Records and more are also covered. Some excerpts from the conversation—which you can read in full at the above-mentioned link—can be found below:
On the bands forthcoming new album:
“…I hate to always be the person that’s like, “This is our best new album,” because I think every time it’s the best one. I’m realizing that all you can try to do is take an honest snapshot of where everyone is at the moment and hope that that place happens to be good when you look back at it. When you’re in it, you’re too emotionally attached to it to really gain any kind of hindsight to it.
Now that we’ve been around for a while, I can kind of be a little bit more objective and see what records were the ones where we made big leaps–the obvious ones, like Calculating Infinity, was a big jump, and I feel like Miss Machine was a really big jump. I feel like our work on Option Paralysis was like us refining Miss Machine.
It wasn’t like we were making colossal jumps. This is the first one since Miss Machine where I felt like, Wow, all of us as individuals and collectively are moving into, like, some other phase of our career.
I think we’ve all just gotten a lot better as individuals and we’ve already had our fucking growing pains and we’ve already fought our brains out. We went from being kids to adults together. We kind of all realized our strengths and how to leave one another alone and not have ego clashes.
I think this record is the record where we’re like adults now. People have gotten married or we have serious girlfriends, like, really major shit has gone down in our lives, and it just seemed really…it seemed like less edge-of-our-pants, not knowing if we were gonna pull it together.”
On how the new album sounds:
“We made a really conscious effort this time to try to do some different stuff. I feel like, as any band that’s put out a bunch of records, we have our patterns, even if our patterns are a little harder to decipher. We’ve made a really deliberate, conscious effort to be like, “The first song is gonna start differently than any Dillinger record because every Dillinger record starts with like a train wreck and ‘Aaahhhh‘ right away.”
We want to do it differently this time. Ya know, “Have we ever started a song with bass before? No? Well, let’s start a song with bass.” “Have we ever started a song with just drums? No, we haven’t done that? Let’s do that.” Just anything we can do to push ourselves into uncomfortable territory now because I think that’s necessary because no one else is gonna do it.
We have to make effort to be like, “This is what we would normally do. Let’s deliberately not do that.” It’s actually made everything a lot more interesting for us. Those little things make a difference. We push each other creatively.”
On whether or not there will be guest musicians on the new album:
“Yes, but I am not at liberty to say. I’m pretty, pretty sure we’ll have some fairly heavy hitters on here, which is pretty cool because I think it’s…we’ve had Brent [Hinds, Mastodon guitarist] on Ire Works‘ “Horse Hunter.” I think this time people are gonna be like, “What the fuck?” about some of the people.”
On Jeff Tuttle leaving the band:
“Jeff is a really creative guy. I think he was like, “I’m killing myself onstage every night playing guitar in these other guys’ band and I’m not maybe utilizing all of my creative talents.
I’m away from my wife, and we have a house together and now she lives in it by herself. Maybe I have to start doing what I’m gonna be doing when I’m 60 instead of doing what I’m gonna be doing for a few more years.”
It was really amicable. There was no fight. We saw it coming. We could kinda tell that maybe his heart was starting to wander a little bit. He’s always been really into film. He stays up at night watching horror movies and knows every little stylistic thing about every weird horror director.
So it wasn’t that big of a shock. I didn’t know there was a film industry in Detroit so that was the shock. I was like, “Wait, you’re leaving the music industry to go to film school in Detroit?” That’s like going to fucking lifeguard school in Alaska or something. What’s happening? He’s kicking ass at it.”
On Tuttle‘s replacement:
“We don’t have one, to be honest with you. We played that California Metalfest with James Love who was the interim guy from between Brian [Benoit] and Jeff. We don’t know if we’re gonna have him for the full record cycle or whether he can even commit to it.
After six years of domesticity, it’s a little daunting to be like, “I’m gonna get back on the pirate ship for a few years.” We’re actually really not pressed about it. We know that the record is the most important thing. If the record is killer, the other stuff takes care of itself.
On whether or not they will be releasing other acts through their Party Smasher Inc. imprint label:
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ben and I have been kind of stockpiling some side projects over the last couple of years. Ben has Giraffe Tongue [Orchestra, his band with Mastodon‘s Brent Hinds, Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery, and ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore], and I’m thinking now we might do that on Party Smasher.
I don’t know if my project with Max Cavalera is gonna come out on that. Then I’ve got another project with this guy Josh [Eutis], who is in Puscifer and does an electronic thing called Telefon Tel Aviv, and that’s called The Black Queen and that’s gonna come out for sure on Party Smasher.
I think we’re just gonna start unloading now that we have a solid home for the label. We can just be like, “If I wanna do a weird avant-garde solo record and make 500 of them, here’s where it’s coming out.” It’s kind of a nice feeling.”
On his own upcoming project with Soulfly‘s Max Cavalera and more:
“It’s crazy. That thing is just becoming a big snowball of people. Me and Max started hanging out and we wrote really quickly and we were talking about all these old metal records and talking about old hardcore records and punk records and we had a lot of similar reference points.
We were like, “We could make a pretty sick fucking punk, thrash fucking type album.” Then Dave Elitch [The Mars Volta] who’s a buddy a mine was like, “I wanna play drums on this.” For a minute, Nate Newton from Converge was involved and he just couldn’t do it because he was so involved in so much already.
Then Troy expressed interest. It was kind of, like, a drunken party night type thing and he was like, “I wanna play bass. Can you imagine if all three of us were singing?” I’m like, “Fuck yeah!” Just like raging at 4 in the morning.
Then the next day, I texted him and was like, “I don’t know how serious any of us were,” and he was like “Dude, I’m totally serious.” I was like, “Fuck. This has now just achieved…like, this has to be awesome or else we’re fucked.”
We’re gonna finish the Dillinger record and I think we’re going right into the studio the beginning of January and record this other album and hold it. We can’t put it out the same time as the Dillinger record so we’ll hold it for maybe eight or nine months, and at the end of 2013, we’ll move that thing. It’s really crazy. It’s really surreal. It’s just all fucking good. Life is good.”
