Spylacopa Article/Review in Alternative Press

Here's a (incredibly hard to read) scan of an article/review of Spylacopa's debut EP by Alternative Press, taken from the Rising Pulse blog:

Spylacopa in Revolver Magazine

Taken from the Spylacopa MySpace page, a two page spread in this months issue of Revolver Magazine.

Alarm Magazine's Best Albums of the Week

Spylacopa's debut EP has been listed as one of Alarm Magazine's best albums of the week. Go here for more info.

Spyalcopa in Decibel Magazine

Spylacopa was featured in the December issue of Decibel Magazine. Article is available from Rising Pulse Records' blog at this location.

Scans from Total Guitar Magazine

Ben Weinman and Jeff Tuttle were featured in UK's Total Guitar Magazine. Here are some scans:



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discuss this

Metal Sucks Article on Spylacopa

Metal Sucks have an article on Spyalcopa called "A New Supergroup You Might Actually Like", which you can read here.

discuss this

New Article/Interview With Liam Wilson

Spirt Community Newspapers has a really cool article and interview with Liam Wilson, which you can check out at this location.

Thanks to Liam for sending it in!

Old and New Scans of DEP Features in Rock-A-Rolla

I just today picked up Rock-A-Rolla Magazine's 14th issue, in which I found a live review of The Dillinger Escape Plan. So I've scanned that, in addition to a Dillinger Escape Plan feature article/interview, review on Ire Works, and the first part of Rock-A-Rolla's top 30 albums from 2007 (in which Ire Works came out at 4th) all of which were featured in Rock-A-Rolla's 12th issue. You can find everything mentioned below and at Flickr.

(click on the images to enlarge them)

Rock-A-Rolla Issues 12 (Scans 1-8) and 14 (Scan 9)

New Article/Interview @ The Skinny

There's an article/interview with The Dillinger Escape Plan over at The Skinny, which you can check out here.

Ben Clears up a lot of the disturbed mess

Over at Headbangers Blog, Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan clears up a lot of the media misinterpretation regarding the Disturbed "feud":

In response to this whole Disturbed drama, people have to realize that the press paraphrase things all the time in order to create this stuff. I know what I said and what I meant when I did that interview talking about Disturbed practicing the way they stand and stuff. It had nothing to do with knocking them.

I was asked in an interview about whether or not we practice our stage show based on the fact that we are so active. I simply said no, and that I once saw Disturbed sound check in London when we were playing the smaller club attached to the venue that they were playing the same night. I think our room was 1000 people and their room was like 2,000 people. They were practicing where they would stand and pose and stuff. I was just differentiating what we do and what they do. We don’t do that. Big deal.

Considering how the information was presented to them, I don’t blame them for being a little pissed. But to imply that we need to be taught a lesson from them about how it works in the big time is ridiculous. This band has been self contained and managed for 11 years. We have played in front of 100 people and in front of 50,000 people. We have been on national TV shows and covered in major publications. I don’t really care about their lighting cues or guitar solos. Good for them and good luck with that. I hope they sell a codrillian records and levitate over the crowd on a unicorn. Oh and just to clear another thing up… I never even responded to his comments until now. I don’t write our MySpace blogs. So again, misinformation.

Discuss here.

And so it continues...

If you remember, not so long ago I posted about a so-called feud between The Dillinger Escape Plan and Disturbed. Well, just a few days ago in their latest MySpace post, DEP added the following:

The guitar player Dom Deluise or whatever his name is with the little peen complex from that band Disturbia or whatever they're called thinks that we care about them. Old news, but still funny. Check it. "My Ferrari is better than your Honda!!! Our stages come apart and travel with us and yours don't!!! We have thirty guitar techs and you have one!". Coooool self esteem barometer douchebag. Wait...what's that I hear? The sound of your band still sucking? Oh, right. Gotcha there, bud.

...which, whether coincidental or not, was the exact same time that David Draiman of Disturbed issued the following statement in an episode of Rockline, which aired on June 2nd (which you can get listen to here):

I'm actually very confused by [Weinman's comments], 'cause, to be honest with you, we don't normally let anybody around when we're checking or we don't pay attention to it, number one. Number two is I don't ever remember playing with the guys, to be honest with you. I don't know what they were doing there. I don't ever remember having them open for us, so… I don't even know what the hell they're talking about. And then as far as 'rehearsing moves,' I mean, I don't know who the hell they think we are — we're not N'Sync; we're not going up there with choreography or something like that, trying to rehearse. 'This is when I put my foot on the monitor here.' [Laughs] No one cares about that. But when it's time for Danny [Donegan, Disturbed guitarist] to hit his guitar solo, yeah, he needs to be in a particular cued spot so that the lights go to that focus point, when there's a little particular fill in the song. It's called production — it's what any big professional band that isn't just punk rock… Not to say that there is anything wrong with punk rock, because I have my roots in it, but you can't compare the two styles of a show. The Dillinger Escape Plan are more punk and I respect them for what they do — I'm not even calling them out on any level, in any way shape or form. I likhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife the style of what they do. I don't understand what the hell they think they saw with us, but gentlemen, let me give you a little bit of education: This is what the big boys do who play stadium shows — they wanna worry about how the lights look that they spend so much money on.

There are about a million sites that are touching on this. Here are some of those, if you want (not much more) info:

• Rockdirt
• Blabbermouth
• Metal Hammer
• Antimusic
• Idolator
• Exclaim News
• Metal Injection
• Metal Rage
• Stereogum
• Heavymetalmusic.biz
• Rock Video Today
• MTV
• MetalSucks
  

And, as always, you can keep the discussion on this topic rolling over at the DEP forums at this location.

Chris Pennie Talks About Leaving DEP And How He Feels in Coheed

Chris Pennie, currently the drummer for Coheed and Cambria, has been saying a few things about leaving DEP, and how it's been since then. The following is an excerpt from an article in the Post Gazette:

"Coheed, more of a prog-rock enterprise, had opened for Dillinger, and later when they needed a replacement for drummer Josh Eppard, he got the invite. "I got to go up there and play with them," Pennie says. "I think things really clicked personality-wise and musically."

It looked like Dillinger Escape Plan was going to be on hiatus due to personal problems, so for a while, Pennie thought he could work both bands. The guys in Dillinger seemed to be OK with it, at least until they found out he was going to start recording on Coheed's new record, actually titled "Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow."That's when he was denied permission to either play for or record from Coheed's label, Relapse Records.

"It was a very abusive relationship with that band," he says. "It was an ugly and dark time. I ended up leaving the band and it's the best thing I ever could have done."

Although Pennie worked on the demos with Coheed by sending digital files back and forth, the New York prog-rock band had to bring in Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters at the last minute to play the parts in the studio.

Now, though, Pennie is free to tour with Coheed and enjoying not only the band's energy but the stylistic change.

"With Dillinger, there's a lot of notes being played drum-wise," he says. "The music is really heavy and very busy. With Coheed, there's a lot more space. I'm working with a guy who's crafting melodies and there's a wider spectrum of things to work with. Instead of cramming a lot of notes into one song, it's more a matter of knowing how to use the notes."

And here's an excerpt from an article in The Gauntlet:

"There are a lot of things that excite me about this band right now," says Pennie. "This is probably the happiest time of my life. We have a lot of fun when we're playing, we're relaxed and there's no drama. Things are never so sweet without the bitter."

"The way that I look at it, you have to make certain sacrifices to get to where you want to be," says Pennie. "To me it was very important to be a part of this band. You want to get along with the people you are with, and with Dillinger it just wasn't happening. It became bitter and that was the climactic point of the way everything went, but they got a new drummer and now I'm able to play and tour with Coheed."

Discuss here.

P.S. I know that it's off topic, but if you look around the page, you may notice that I'm now using Apture, which is, in Lawrence Lessig's words, a "fantastically cool code to watch". Check it out.

Edit: Taken it off for now.

DEP and Disturbed

A couple of weeks ago in Beat Magazine, Ben Weinman from the Dillinger Escape Plan commented on the fact that he saw the guys from Disturbed “practicing where they were going to walk and when they were going to put their leg up on the monitor and pose. That was weird for us. There are times where I don’t even know where I am”. Said only to point out how this stands in contrast to who DEP are as a band, it has apparently prompted Disturbed (and quite a few of their evident insecurities) to say the following (taken from this article):

"I never even remember meeting these guys, and I think we know anybody that's even in the room during our soundchecks, so that's shocking to me, because I would think that we would have met them if they were standing there during our soundcheck," Donegan said. "That's funny. When we do a bigger production, there may be certain lighting cues for certain highlights of the show, but I wouldn't call it 'posing,' just a cue for our lighting guy, so he can add more drama to the set. If [they sold some records, and were at the level we're at, maybe they'd see that, for bands like Kiss and Metallica, there are certain highlight points during a set that you want to focus on. If I'm going to go over to one spot and do a guitar solo, my lighting guy may need to know that, so he can focus in on that"

"If that's posing, then so be it," the guitarist continued. "To me, I don't think we talk about when we're going to put our foot up on a monitor. That's just silly. It's a natural thing we do. Those guys can say whatever they want. If that's supposed to be a jab at us, am I offended? I don't give a shit. If they're saying it because they're haters, why? Because we sell millions of records and lots of tickets? It sounds more like jealousy to me."

Plus, Donegan points out, Disturbed's stage shows often feature pyrotechnics displays — as they will this summer, when the band co-headlines the inaugural Rockstar Energy Mayhem Fest with Slipknot. "We have millions of fans, and we find ways to connect with them," he added. "We utilize theatrics and pyro, so we have to rehearse where the pyro is going to go off, because we don't want to have a James Hetfield moment and get caught in the flame. But that's something Dillinger Escape Plan would know nothing about, because they don't play arenas —: they play clubs."

Discuss here.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who have sent photos so far, I appreciate it. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, scroll down a bit.)

Liam in Bass Player's March/May Issues

Liam Wilson has a feature in the current Bass Player Magazine, which you can view here. According to his MySpace post, he also has another feature (a soapbox article) in the next couple of months (probably May).

Article in the Kitsap Sun and SMTS

Kitsap Sun have posted an article on DEP, which recounts their numerous changes in line-up and look at how it's affected the band. Full article here.

Also, I got an email the other day about a site call Show Me The Setlist, which is a wiki-based site designed for people to post set-lists, discuss shows and so on. Give the DEP section of the site a bit of a look here. There's not much there at the moment, so help out if you can.