Artist The Dillinger Escape Plan

There’s technical prowess, and then there’s The Dillinger Escape Plan. Just about every genre hybrid involving metal and batshit-insane technicality has been attributed to the pioneering New Jersey act—mathcore, metalcore, tech-metal, experimental metal, and so on—and with good reason: DEP plays supremely intricate jazz-time hardcore that also blows brains and batters ears. By 2007’s well-received Ire Works, the band had already been through a couple careers’ worth of critical fervor/fatigue and internal drama. (Today, lead guitarist Ben Weinman remains its sole original member.) Things have been stable since last year’s long-awaited Option Paralysis—a typically intense scatter of noise and punishing extremeness precisely applied—and the band has a follow-up in the works.

Updated 03/30/2011