BEN WEINMAN DISCUSSES THE UNEXPECTED RETURN OF THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN AND THE MAKING OF THEIR LANDMARK DEBUT ALBUM, 1999’S CALCULATING INFINITY
By Gregory Adams
BEN WEINMAN HADN’T planned on playing Dillinger Escape Plan songs in 2024. Back in 2017, the New Jersey guitarist thought he’d concluded the chaotic fusion extremists’ 20-year run at the top of their game, specifically while stomping out the irregular-shifting mosh of “43% Burnt,” perhaps the band’s most iconic bit of brutality. Since then, Weinman has happily spent time scoring film projects and thrashing rhythms with crossover mainstays Suicidal Tendencies. That all changes this June when Dillinger celebrate the silver anniversary of their manically experimental debut album, 1999’s Calculating Infinity, with a rare trio of headlining dates in New York and a warmup set at Pomona, California’s No Values festival. Though the outfit’s meter-defying return is highly anticipated, Weinman had reservations about reviving the Plan.
“I had no intentions of breaking up with the thought of doing it again later as a reunion,” the guitarist says of Dillinger’s initial implosion. “As far as I was concerned, when I walked offstage at the end of 2017, I felt completely satisfied.”
What changed his mind was an opportunity to step onstage with the band’s original all-rage howler, Dimitri Minakakis — a high school friend who departed Dillinger in 2001. A recent run of similarly nostalgic shows supporting Suicidal Tendencies’ 1983 self-titled debut also opened Weinman’s eyes to bringing Calculating Infinity to a new generation of music fans. “As a fan of Suicidal, it’s cool to be playing the songs that were the start of everything and are still very relevant — like ‘Institutionalized.’ And seeing the kids of the original fans going off at these shows was really inspiring.”
The roots of the Dillinger Escape Plan, meanwhile, lay in a straight-forward Nineties hardcore band called Arcane, whom the competitive Weinman admits weren’t pushing the needle in their local basement circuit. Citing a need to “put the pedal to the metal,” the new plan was to obnoxiously smash drummer Chris Pennie’s progressive concussive-ness against the youthful rage bubbling within Weinman. “I was angry. I wanted to vent everything [into the music]. So, he was pushing me on a technical side, and I was pushing him on a more visceral side,” We
