Band:	The Dillinger Escape Plan
Album:	Miss Machine
Style:	Math metal, Metalcore
Release date:	July 20, 2004
Guest review by:	parasite

01. Panasonic Youth
02. Sunshine The Werewolf
03. Highway Robbery
04. Van Damsel
05. Phone Home
06. We Are The Storm
07. Crutch Field Tongs
08. Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants
09. Baby's First Coffin
10. Unretrofied
11. The Perfect Design

An insane mix of metal, hardcore punk, jazz and everything else that is shoved together to form this avant-garde masterpiece. Although Miss Machine may be less brutal than its predecessor, calculating infinity, it still remains pretty damn heavy. They have evolved their sound now using more melodies and even a few catchy choruses! Opener 'Panasonic youth' is the frantic and aggressive type of song that fans of previous releases would expect but the it alternates from this, to slow and melodic throughout the album. Because of the hundreds of bands imitating them, fans would surely have been disappointed if they had simply tried to repeat the intensity of 'calculating infinity' but by altering their style, making the album even more varied and confusing than before, it remains fresh-sounding and they continue to stand out from the crowd.

One of the problems that many people claim this band has is that the songs seem unpredictable and disjointed in the way that they switch speeds and style unexpectedly, even more so on this album. But who says that music (particularly metal) has to be predictable and the seemingly random song structure is its charm. Ironically, their music has quite a complicated structure in order to give it this feel of randomness. Even after several listens its hard to predict exactly what's going to happen next and that just makes it stand out as an exceptional album.

It's hard to pick faults with this album but one thing that seemed odd to me was the inclusion of 'crutch field tongs', a machine sound-effect repeated over and over for 52 seconds. It seems out of place and unnecessary as it adds nothing to the album.

I'm sure that many metal fans wouldn't be caught dead listening to anything with any influence from punk but if you're that narrow-minded you wouldn't be able to appreciate an album as artistic and unique as this anyway. I think that many albums that are rated 10 don't full deserve it but something that can be as inventive, as technical and as artistic as this and
still sound amazing deserves full marks.