Look: honestly, I’m just not that into mathcore. A lot of it just seems to be too up its own asshole for me. So as a result, like a total jackass, I didn’t listen to Dillinger Escape Plan’s recent release, Ire Works, until this weekend, after I read the January ’08 issue of Decibel, where the album is named #3 on the magazine’s list of the top 40 albums of the year and J. Bennett – a dependable rock journalist if ever there was one – compares the tracks “Black Bubblegum” and “Milk Lizard” to Faith No More, a.k.a. one of the very best bands of all time.

As a result, I finally sat down and listened to Ire Works.

Then I listened to it again. And again. And again. And again.

Jesus. Fucking. CHRIST. This album is fucking great, dude. And, yeah, some of it sounds like FNM – but it’s never derivative. Mostly, it just makes you wonder how these dudes got it so right when an entire generation of nu metal bands got it so very, very wrong.

Around Saturday afternoon, I’d finally become so obsessed with DEP that I went back and read the cover story and Ire Works review in the magazine’s December ’07 issue – two articles I had pretty much skipped altogether (again, I’m a schmuck) – and discovered that Bennett had compared the band to FNM before, particularly their tracks “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants” and “Unretrofied” from the band’s last album, 2004′s Miss Machine (incidentally, the band has also recorded an EP with Mike Patton, Irony is a Dead Scene, although, ironically, that offering does not sound so FNM-ish).

This is all a very long winded way of saying that this band is clearly the tits, and I’m sorry for having ignored them for so long.

To try and prove my point, below please find the video for “Unretrofied.” I’ve also included some videos a YouTuber made which just plays the songs “Black Bubblegum” and “Milk Lizard” over the Ire Works cover art. There’s lot of great songs on these albums, though, and if you’re, like me, a total moron who has thus far ignored this band, I encourage you to seek these albums out in their entirey for yourself. In the meantime, please enjoy our own Kip Wingerschmidt’s brilliant interview with DEP guitarist Ben Weinman, or visit DEP on MySpace.

“Unretrofied”
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/4QNVwH8ROn4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

“Black Bubblegum”
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/rD0_FmrHlJg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

“Milk Lizard”
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/kNk9fjHcFEs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR