THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN’S GUITAR PLAYER THROWS AXL’S THEORIES ON KARMA INTO QUESTION

Lately it seems as if our own resident hater-in-chief Axl Rosieberg has been regularly offering and re-offering his interpretations of that elusive Eastern philosophical concept known as karma. My man has been very forthcoming with the hate (as he tends to be), denouncing recently crippled Chester Bennington (Linkin Park’s “singer”, who broke his arm in the middle of a gig) and Korn’s guitarist Munky (who apparantly got punched out by a dude on Munky’s own personal record label for being a stupid drunken idiot, according to a source close to Korn) as “getting what they deserve”. According to Axl, karma strikes fiercely, taking vengance on fools who are asking for it (or at least those who make shitty music).

So then what, pray tell, is Axl’s response to The Dillinger Escape Plan‘s Ben Weinman’s recently broken foot? Did that Jew bastard get what was coming to him, or is this a serious blip in the karmic matrix? The DEP has a great new album, Ire Works, due out in less than a couple weeks (Nov.13th) – which you can now listen to in its entirety – had a big tour scheduled, and I’m sure plenty of other positive things in the works; does Ben/the band somehow deserve this unfortunate accident for something he/they did in a previous life? Highly doubtful. So then if this ain’t “karma”, and everything happens for a reason, how can we make sense of it?

It seems like lately everyone’s hopping on this whole bone-breaking fad bandwagon – for Chrissakes, even the legendary Jimmy Page is getting into it. Must be that time of year. As one who has recently suffered an accident that resulted in a broken bone myself (and always has a desire to make sense of the karmic implications), I am quite curious how the esteemed Monsignor Rosenberg can explain these unfortunate recent events happening to good musicians who seemingly don’t deserve it (myself excluded, of course).

According to the DEP camp, the band’s “resident Tornado Of Destruction In A Small Kosher Frame known as Ben Weinman [guitar] somehow [managed to] break his foot while filming A FUCKING VIDEO. Of all the places and times Ben has been seriously hurt playing, he outdoes himself and manages to break his foot in A FUCKING VIDEO. He, of course, was ready to go out and kick ass with a cast on his foot, which we seriously considered for a second, but figured we’d wait ’till he could actually kick ass with both feet just in case he did further damage to his foot, which he certainly would have. Which means we need 4-6 weeks for him to fully heal.”

So the band has unfortunately had to cancel all of their USA and Europe tour dates, but the good news is that they’ve already rescheduled the North American dates (NYC on December 16th w/Genghis Tron opening), which have been extended to include Canada and the USA cities that they were missing like Detroit, Austin, Portland and Seattle.

“We’re gonna have a CD-release party on November 13th on the East Coast in a soon-to-be-announced city, sure to be way ’87, and then we’re gonna steamroll a full North American headlining tour from then ’til a few days before Santa comes. Then we’ll hit up overseas right away in 2008 with a killer package and more extra dates there too, maybe Japan and Australia, we’ll nail it down soon…Send Ben your good vibes, he is hobbling around on crutches out in the hallway right now as I type this.”

It’s easy to talk shit about kings of crap like Linkin Park and Korn, but one’s theories about the cosmic rules of the universe best ought be consistent, no? After recently hearing the staggering merits of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fantastic new album, it’s hard to imagine that any member of such a forward-thinking creative unit deserves the pain and nastiness of a broken bone. (Also that other guy Jimmy Page who just broke his finger used to be in a band called Led Zeppelin that was apparantly pretty sweet)

So how do we explain this one, professor? Shit happens? Axl, shed us some light, amigo!

-KW

THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN‘s long-awaited new full-length album, “Ire Works”, is scheduled for release on Novemebr 13. The CD was recorded with long-time engineer Steve Evetts at his Omen Room Studios in Los Angeles , CA. The entire album is available to check out via streaming media exclusively on the band’s MySpace page.