The Dillinger Escape Plan &#8211; Camden Barfly

The Dillinger Escape Plan play a single date on the UK leg of their tour promoting new album “Option Paralysis”. This was initially set for “one night only” at the Camden Barfly and it sold out in the blink of an eye. After overwhelming pressure the band added an additional show, a matinee performance at the same venue on the same day.

The Dillinger Escape Plan is a dish best served hot, sweaty and frantic. In a tiny oven-like room surrounded by feral , rabid fans DEP take to the stage for the second time on a cold February Friday night. Like a burning match to a dry powder keg, the barfly explodes into a vortex of sound and motion.

The band sound great, the complexities and nuances of the music are thrown out to the faithful and embraced. But tonight it’s not about CD perfect sound, the crowd want something more, the elusive “it” that can only be found in live music and DEP are here to deliver a show tonight. With material spanning their career DEP introduce their new material cushioned with the familiarity of old and they do so with the raw aggression and precision you would expect.

For a band with such a physical show you could forgive them for being a little off their game during their second show of the day. But the stresses and exertions of the previous show in the afternoon seem to have little effect on the band whose energy levels and enthusiasm are sky high.

DEP bring the house down, literally! Debris is passed around the crowd like the spoils of war and exposed wiring dangles from the ceiling like vipers threatening each crowd surfer or stage diver that ventures too close with lightening kiss.