No Escaping It: Metal Band's Plan 'Works'

Any metal band can rip off the top of your head. Dillinger Escape Plan nests in your brain, laying eggs that hatch twisting rhythms, jazzy interludes and melodic surprises. If 2004's "Miss Machine" bested the competition, "Ire Works" makes plain DEP has no competition.

The band's stop-on-a-dime rhythmic shifts are as seamless as ever, and it has surrendered not an ounce of brute force. But on "Ire Works," Dillinger Escape Plan opens up melodically, incorporating hooks, space and texture as never before.

On "Unretrofied," from "Miss Machine," DEP flirted with pop. It has its way with it on this album's "Black Bubblegum," armoring hooks and an undeniably catchy - and commercial - melody with steely riffs and beats. Guess they weren't fooling around when they covered "Like I Love You" on last year's "Plagiarism" EP.

"Milk Lizard" is a soaring rock anthem, the sort of thing Dillinger Escape Plan might have avoided previously. It's powerful and devoid of cliche. "Dead as History" floats out on a bed of feathery harmonies, while "Black Bubblegum" gets the full-on falsetto treatment.

Once "Mouth of Ghosts" closes the disc on waves of Latin rhythms, jazz piano and breathtaking choruses, it's hard to believe there's anything this band can't do.

Metal, like most contemporary musical genres, plays by increasingly restrictive rules and it's almost inevitable that "Ire Works" is going to put off narrow-minded fans for coloring outside the lines. "Ire Works" is a big middle-finger salute to that sort of thinking.

Besides, there's plenty of knock-down drag-out riff wrangling in the one-two punch of opening tracks "Fix Your Face" and "Lurch," or the suite of brief tunes than make up the disc's middle section.

DEP isn't prolific: "Ire Works" is only its third full-length in almost 10 years of recording. But if it takes time to get it this right, so be it. "Ire Works" easily is one 2007's best albums.

Download this: "Mouth of Ghosts"