The Dillinger Escape Plan live in Sydney recap

Alright, so it looks like I was one of the few people in Sydney who actually forked over $80 of my hard earned dollars to check The Dillinger Escape Plan on their Australian tour for Ire Works. Here's a quick recap of the night.

Hospital the Musical were the local support, but the sound of the UNSW Roundhouse didnt work in their favour - the mix was very drum heavy, making it quite hard to hear any of the cool little technical riffs and rhythms they were playing. I look forward to actually watching these guys in a smaller venue; you can tell they'd be pretty intense.

Next up were Relapse Records label mates Coliseum, who basically piggybacked off of The Dillinger Escape Plans tour. Jesus Christ these guys were boring as all hell. They're a three piece who play mid-paced, rocky hardcore with extremely monotonous vocals that sound a little bit like modern Anthrax if Josh Bush could be that boring. Anyway this sucked royally so I spent all of their set watching the Waratah's play and chatting to Phil from Rather Be Dead.

After making us wait for fucking ages, The Dillinger Escape Plan finally came out. The venue definitely wasn't full - they were trying to desperately palm off tickets in the weeks leading up. I guess thats what you get when you're a bunch of jerks who have decided the $25 they charged the first time wasnt enough.

The came out and open up to one of the heavier songs off Ire Works, then jumped right 43% Burnt, then Panasonic Youth. How'd did the band act? Man they went fucking insane. By the end of the first song Greg drove into the crowd screaming, then jumped on top of a huge fucking PA speaker stack screaming his head off. Ben went as insane as he usually does, and he too ended up on top of his amp and the PA speakers at any point in time. Jeff Tuttle did his best to look gay with his big dyed black AFI style emo whip. He desperately tried to go spastic but just ended up looking really awkward and silly. Liam just stood there with his classy mo which reminded me of Derek Smalls (bassist of Spinal Tap) and looked like he was having a lot of fun.

They played the rockier pop song Milk Lizard and the crowd went ballistic because they were predominately 17 year old emo kiddies and art students. They bopped up and down like a homosexual faux pop rock crowd in some stupid music video clip. On the other hand, when they belted out Abe The Cop and Sugar Coated Sour I had to be the only person losing my mind while throwing around anyone near me. It was almost as if these kids didnt really even know Miss Machine - and I'm sure a lot of them had only heard of the group through Ire Works.

Anyway, they ended up playing Black Bubblegum and it was gay as. The crowd bopped around like shitheads again and sung every single word; again they seemed to know the words of all the poppy songs and nothing else. Nearly no one moshed unless there was a big and relatively easy breakdown.

By the end of the night Greg and Ben had jumped into the crowd countless times; Greg had throw his mic stand into the crowd more than once, awesomely catching some little kid in the face with it HARD the last time. Greg also thought it would be a good idea to ditch one of those large, heavy roadie travel cases into the crowd, as well as a huge bin and whatever else he could find.

They played a solid collection of songs; touching on all the heavier moments of Ire Works, most of Miss Machine as well as 43% Burnt, Abe The Cop, When Good Dogs Do Bad Things and Sugar Coated Sour (there couldve been one or two more earlier ones in there too) over about 60 minutes. All in all, Dillinger showed they are still amazingly energetic live and still love what they're doing. They also showed that their new following is gay and stood around perplexed when they went into any of their heavier, faster, more complicated or older songs.

Definitely not worth $80, but by no means a disappointment... aside from the crowd and the Roundhouse's sub-par acoustic properties.