Hoo-ray! It’s the first cinemetal round-up of 2011! Let’s see who made me pissy today.

First up we have “Hammer of the North,” from Grand Magus. It’s just a performance clip, but as far as performance clips (or “perflips,” as they’re known in the biz) go, it’s not bad — I mean, the song is catchy, which helps, and the footage is basically well shot, and clearly at least a little bit of thought went into the editing (all the cuts are on drum beats), so that’s good. In fact, I almost wish they’d taken out all the shit with the forest and the wolf at the beginning, because I kept thinking it was gonna come back and be important, but it doesn’t come back ’til the end, by which point its placement seems as arbitrary as at the start. So as it stands, it almost seems like the video was supposed to be something else, or maybe they didn’t have confidence in the video — “Oh, this sucks, we’d better throw a random shot of a wolf in there somewhere.”

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At this point, how much of an introduction do The Dillinger Escape Plan really need? They’re one of the most talked-about bands of the last decade, and that talk hasn’t quieted down very much in the face of their latest release, Option Paralysis, which comes out today. The album is a very natural evolutionary step from Ire Works, and has (rightly) been met with the heaping tons of praise we’ve come to expect DEP to garner.

When I went to interview vocalist Greg Puciato, bassist Liam Wilson, and drummer Billy Rymer – the latest addition to the band’s line-up – they were right in the middle of signing a table-full of Option Paralysis CD booklets, and only had about twenty minutes to spare before they had to participate in a live web-chat; then they were set to kick-off their headlining tour the next night. You might think that such an abundance of promotional activities would leave these fellas frazzled or at least exhausted, but they were clearly far too excited about the impending release to be bothered by having to talk to a schmucky blogger like me.

After the jump, get Greg, Liam, and Billy’s thoughts on Option Paralysis, the pressure of following Ire Works, their search for a new drummer, fans who wish they’d just stick to crazy-ass mathcore, the joys of their ever-increasing fame, and more.

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Yesterday I interviewed Greg Puciato, Liam Wilson, and Billy Rymer from The Dillinger Escape Plan (transcript coming soon); because Rymer is the band’s new drummer and this is his first album with DEP, it should go without saying that a portion of the conversation was devoted to how he joined the band, his experience as “the new guy,” and his predecessors – namely Gil Sharone and, of course, Chris Pennie. Unless you live under a Dino Cazares, you already know that Pennie is now the drummer for Coheed and Cambria; since I’m a wwwwaaaaayyyyy bigger fan of DEP than I am of C&C, I don’t spend much time thinking about Pennie these days. Which isn’t to take away from his incredible talent; I’m just saying, it’s unusual for me to have Pennie on the brain at this particular moment in time.

But now here we are, I was just thinking about him yesterday, and he’s already back in the headlines! It turns out that Pennie is in the whole other band I didn’t even know about, Return to Earth, who released an album called Captains of Industry in 2007; now they’ve signed with Metal Blade, who will release their sophomore effort, Automata, sometime this summer.

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Well… happy friggin’ new year, everyone. We gots some catchin’ up to do.

As Dillinger Escape Plan fans may have heard by now, the band has hired some dude no one has ever heard of, Billy Rymer from The Rivalry, to replace Gil Sharone, who, in turn, replaced founding drummer Chris Pennie for 2007′s orgasm-inducing Ire Works and all subsequent touring for that album. Now, I know that Sharone’s departure may worry the DEP faithful – the dude was not only an awesome drummer, but watching how chill he always was live, even while playing some retardedly complex drum parts, would seem to suggest that he may very well be a god amongst men (or at least drummers). Hell, even DEP front dude Greg Puciato told us that Sharone is like “the kid in school who always gets good grades just because he’s naturally fucking super gifted.”

But here’s the thing.

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